Morphology of a self-doped conducting oligomer for green energy applications

A recently synthesized self-doped conducting oligomer, salt of bis[3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene]3thiophene butyric acid, ETE-S, is a novel promising material for green energy applications. Recently, it has been demonstrated that it can polymerize in vivo, in plant systems, leading to a formation of lo...

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Detalhes bibliográficos
Autores: Franco-González, Juan Felipe, Pavlopoulou, Eleni, Stavrinidou, Eleni, Gabrielsson, Roger, Simon, Daniel T., Berggren, Magnus, Zozoulenko, Igor V.
Tipo de documento: artigo
Data de publicação:2018
País:España
Recursos:Universidad Autónoma de Madrid
Repositório:Biblos-e Archivo. Repositorio Institucional de la UAM
Idioma:inglês
OAI Identifier:oai:repositorio.uam.es:10486/685953
Acesso em linha:http://hdl.handle.net/10486/685953
https://dx.doi.org/10.1039/c7nr04617k
Access Level:Acceso aberto
Palavra-chave:Oligomer
ETE-S
Polymerize in vivo
GIWAXS
MD simulations
Medicina
Descrição
Resumo:A recently synthesized self-doped conducting oligomer, salt of bis[3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene]3thiophene butyric acid, ETE-S, is a novel promising material for green energy applications. Recently, it has been demonstrated that it can polymerize in vivo, in plant systems, leading to a formation of long-range conducting wires, charge storage and supercapacitive behaviour of living plants. Here we investigate the morphology of ETE-S combining the experimental characterisation using Grazing Incidence Wide Angle X-ray Scattering (GIWAXS) and atomistic molecular dynamics (MD) simulations. The GIWAXS measurements reveal a formation of small crystallites consisting of π-π stacked oligomers (with the staking distance 3.5 Å) that are further organized in h00 lamellae. These experimental results are confirmed by MD calculations, where we calculated the X-ray diffraction pattern and the radial distribution function for the distance between ETE-S chains. Our MD simulations also demonstrate the formation of the percolative paths for charge carriers that extend throughout the whole structure, despite the fact that the oligomers are short (6-9 rings) and crystallites are thin along the π-π stacking direction, consisting of only two or three π-π stacked oligomers. The existence of the percolative paths explains the previously observed high conductivity in in vivo polymerized ETE-S. We also explored the geometrical conformation of ETE-S oligomers and the bending of their aliphatic chains as a function of the oligomer lengths.