Optoelectronic nanostructured materials

Fabrication is difficult, but the large-scale assembly of nanoscale building blocks into either devices (e.g. molecular electronic, or optoelectronic devices), nanostructured materials, or biomedical structures (artificial tissue, nerve-connectors, or drug delivery devices) is an even more daunting and complex problem. There are currently no satisfactory strategies... 

Supramolecular self-assembly has recently been extensively investigated as a tool to create nanostructured or hierarchically structured optoelectronically active materials from monodisperse, conjugated oligomers because such n-conjugated organic materials are interesting candidates for the fabrication of organic... 

Block copolymers have attracted significant attention as nanostructured materials, as they self-assemble to form well-defined, ordered, periodic nanoscale morphologies.The versatility of this unique class of polymers offers tremendous potential for their use as templates and scaffolds for applications in microelectronics, separation devices, optics and optoelectronics. ... 

C. Brochon, S.-J. Mougnier, E. Cloutet, G. Hadziioannou, Design of Il-Conjugated Graft and Block Copolymers A Tool Box for Nanostructured Materials in Optoelectronic Devices. MRS Proc. 2012,1448. 

Nanodevices are systems with nanostructured materials that carry out specific functions with either improved performance or new attributes. Recent years have witnessed the emergence of new device paradigms based on nanostructured materials, including nanoelectronic devices, nano-optoelectronic devices, spintronic devices, nanosensors, and drug and gene delivery systems. 

The formation of nanostructures such as nanodot arrays has drawn a great attention due to the feasible applications in a variety of functional structures and nanodevices containing optoelectronic device, information storage, and sensing media [1-3]. The various methods such as self-assembled nanodots from solution onto substrate, strain-induced growth, and template-based methods have been proposed for the fabrication of nanodot arrays on a large area, [4-6]. However, most of these works can be applied to the small scale systems due to the limited material systems. 

In the bulk form, vanadium oxides display different oxidation states and V—O coordination spheres and exhibit a broad variety of electronic, magnetic, and structural properties [96, 97], which make these materials attractive for many industrial applications. Prominent examples range from the area of catalysis, where V-oxides are used as components of important industrial catalysts for oxidation reactions [98] and environment pollution control [99], to optoelectronics, for the construction of light-induced electrical switching devices [100] and smart thermo-chromic windows. In view of the importance of vanadium oxides in different technological applications, the fabrication of this material in nanostructured form is a particularly attractive goal. 

One-dimensional (ID) nanostructures have also been the focus of extensive studies because of their unique physical properties and potential to revolutionize broad areas of nanotechnology. First, ID nanostructures represent the smallest dimension structure that can efficiently transport electrical carriers and, thus, are ideally suited for the ubiquitous task of moving and routing charges (information) in nanoscale electronics and optoelectronics. Second, ID nanostructures can also exhibit a critical device function and thus can be exploited as both the wiring and device elements in architectures for functional nanosystems.20 In this regard, two material classes, carbon nanotubes2131 and semiconductor nanowires,32"42 have shown particular promise. 

Although there have been great advances in covalent functionalization of fullerenes to obtain surface-modified fullerene derivatives or fullerene polymers, the application of these compounds in composites still remains unexplored, basically because of the low availability of these compounds [132]. However, until now, modified fullerene derivatives have been used to prepare composites with different polymers, including acrylic [133,134] or vinyl polymers [135], polystyrene [136], polyethylene [137], and polyimide [138,139], amongst others. These composite materials have found applications especially in the field of optoelectronics [140] in which the most important applications of the fullerene-polymer composites have been in the field of photovoltaic and optical-limiting materials [141]. The methods to covalently functionalize fullerenes and their application for composites or hybrid materials are very well established and they have set the foundations that later were applied to the covalent functionalization of other carbon nanostructures including CNTs and graphene. 

Potential applications of peptide-polymer conjugates include drug delivery materials, optoelectronics, biosensors, tissue scaffolds, tissue replacement materials, hydrogels, adhesives, biomimetic polymers, lithographic masks, and templates for metallic or silica nanostructures. 

The renewed interested in ZnO as an optoelectronic material has been triggered by reports on p-type conductivity, diluted ferromagnetic properties, thin film oxide field effect transistors, and considerable progress in nanostructure fabrication. All these topics are the subject of a recently published book [11],... 

---