Electron-conducting fullerene

Novel hybrid materials have been realized in which fullerenes participate in composite films with 7r-conjugated-polymer electron donors such as oligothio-phenes. Established studies have already shown that the photoinduced electron transfer is rather enhanced between 7r-conjugated polymers and fullerenes, while back electron transfer is considerably slower [145,149,171,172].Electrosynthe-sized polythiophene with pendant fullerene substituents was recently obtained from the corresponding biothiophene-fulleropyrrolidine dyad [173]. The novel material described has the potential of a double-cable polymer, heavily loaded with fullerene electron-conducting moieties. 

In this work we have chosen the combination of hole-conducting copper-phthalocyanine (CuPc) and the n-conducting fullerene C o, which are both known from organic photovoltaic cells either as heterolayer structures or bulk-heterojunctions [18-21]. They can be considered as model systems for ambipolar transport where the asymmetry of the electron and hole mobilities is adjustable by the concentration of both materials in the mixture. 

The support for the metal nano-particles turns out to be as important as the nano-particles for providing their dispersion and stability. Studies on electron transfer are particularly important for carbon-based materials because those materials, such as glassy carbon, graphite, fullerene, and diamond with different electronic and structural properties, have been proved to possess distinctly different electrochemical properties from each other (Ramesh and Sampath, 2003). Carbon supports provide high electronic conductivity, uniform catalyst dispersion, corrosion resistance, and sufficient access of gas reactants to the catalyst (Ismagilov et al, 2005). In addition to electrical conductivity and surface area, hydrophobicity, morphology, porosity, and... 

The occupation of each tetraliedral and octaliedral site in tliese regularly oriented arrays of cavities by, for example, alkali atoms results in tire transfer of a single electron to tire fullerene s conduction band (ti ) [58]. Consequently,... 

Another interesting applications area for fullerenes is based on materials that can be fabricated using fullerene-doped polymers. Polyvinylcarbazole (PVK) and other selected polymers, such as poly(paraphcnylene-vinylene) (PPV) and phenylmethylpolysilane (PMPS), doped with a mixture of Cgo and C70 have been reported to exhibit exceptionally good photoconductive properties [206, 207, 208] which may lead to the development of future polymeric photoconductive materials. Small concentrations of fullerenes (e.g., by weight) lead to charge transfer of the photo-excited electrons in the polymer to the fullerenes, thereby promoting the conduction of mobile holes in the polymer [209]. Fullerene-doped polymers also have significant potential for use in applications, such as photo-diodes, photo-voltaic devices and as photo-refractive materials. 

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