Co-Assembling P3HT/ZnO as Parallel-Lane Hybrid Nanowires for Photovoltaic Application

The fabrication of organic/inorganic hybrid materials based on conducting polymers and inorganic semiconducting nanoparticles has gathered great attentions recently due to its potential applications in optoelectronics such as solar cells. However, inorganic nanocrystals often suffer from macrophase separation from pi-conjugated polymers following increasing loading concentrations with decreasing interfacial area, leading to reduced efficiency. To counter this problem, we develop a facile in-situ co-assembly method to fabricate highly elongated P3HT nanowires lining along their long fibril-axis with continuous and highly crystalline ZnO nanocrystal pathways. The donor/acceptor (D/A) parallel-lane nanowire hybrid thus formed may act as efficient pathways for charge separation and transport. The optoelectronic property and the solar cell performance of the resulting hybrid will be discussed.