Coaxial carbon nanotube-polythiophene core-shell nanowire for efficient hole transport in heterojunction photovoltaic device

Efficiently extracting hole from a 3-dimensional bulk heterojunction is critical to polymer photovoltaics. One possible approach is to incorporate efficient hole transport pathway within each individual nanoscale donor-phase component. We present a study employing electrochemically prepared metallic carbon nanotube (CNT) polythiophene (PT) core-shell nanowire networks trying to realize such a desired structure. Phenyl-C-60-butyric acid methyl ester was infiltrated into the openings of the core-shell nano-networks as electron acceptor. The thin PT shell can ensure high exciton dissociation rate and efficient free hole transport to the CNT core which serves as an efficient network for extracting hole out of the heterojunction. (C) 2011 American Institute of Physics. [doi:10.1063/1.3645587]