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ACS Appl. Mater. Interfaces, 5 (24), pp 12811–12819. (2013).
Hui Shi, Congcong Liu, Jingkun Xu*, Haijun Song, Baoyang Lu, Fengxing Jiang, Weiqiang Zhou, Ge Zhang, Qinglin Jiang.
Jiangxi Key Laboratory of Organic Chemistry, Jiangxi Science and Technology Normal University, Nanchang 330013, China.
Abstract
A pure organic PEDOT:PSS nanofilm was used as a working electrode for the first time to electrodeposit polymer films of polythiophene (PTh) and its derivatives in a boron trifluoride diethyl ether (BFEE) solution, fabricating a novel generation of bilayered nanofilms. Cyclic voltammetry (CV) demonstrated good electrochemical stability of the as-formed films. Structures and surface morphologies were systematically investigated by the characterizations of cross-section SEM, FT-IR, UV–vis, SEM, and AFM. The resulting films revealed stable and enhanced thermoelectric (TE) performances. The electrical conductivity values of PEDOT:PSS/PTh, PEDOT:PSS/P3MeT, and PEDOT:PSS/P3HT nanofilms were determined to be 123.9, 136.5, and 200.5 S cm–1, respectively. The power factor reached up to be a maximum value of 5.79 μW m–1 k–2. Thus, this technique offers a facile approach to a class of bilayered nanofilms, and it may provide a general strategy for fabricating a new generation of conducting polymers for more practical applications.
Fig. 1 The pure organic PEDOT:PSS electrodes used to electrodeposite polymer films of polythiophenes and the characterizations.
Additional Information:
Recently, conducting polymers have been attracted considerable scientific interest, and have been widely applied in solar cells, light-emitting diodes, sensors, thermoelectric materials etc. Among them, PEDOT:PSS is the most successful conducting polymer owing to its solution processability, high transparency, and excellent thermal stability. The PEDOT:PSS nanofilms have been served as transparent electrode of optoelectronic devices. However, there has been no report on the PEDOT:PSS nanofilms electrode for the electropolymerization.
In the present work, a pure organic PEDOT:PSS nanofilm was used as working electrode for the first time to electrodeposite polymer films of polythiophene (PTh) and its derivatives in a boron trifluoride diethyl ether (BFEE) solution, fabricating a novel generation of bilayered nanofilms. Compared with the traditional working electrodes such as metal, inorganic non-metallic, and carbon materials, the pure organic PEDOT:PSS electrode possesses the advantages of low cost, simple process, easy degradation, and non-pollution. In addition, the as-formed PEDOT:PSS/PThs films showed good electrochemical stability and enhanced thermoelectric (TE) performance, and their power factor reached a maximum of 5.79 μW m-1 K-2. Accordingly, the pure organic PEDOT:PSS electrode is of great significance in the field of electropolymerization, and this technique provides a facile and general method for synthesizing electric materials with better properties for a wider array of applications.
