Chuyen Van Pham

Comparative electron paramagnetic resonance investigation of reduced graphene oxide and carbon nanotubes with different chemical functionalities for quantum dot attachment

Electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) spectroscopy has been applied to different chemically treated reduced graphene oxide (rGO) and multiwalled carbon nanotubes (CNTs). A narrow EPR signal is visible at g = 2.0029 in both GO and CNT-Oxide from carbon-related dangling bonds. EPR signals became broader and of lower intensity after oxygen-containing functionalities were reduced and partially transformed into thiol groups to obtain thiol-functionalized reduced GO (TrGO) and thiol-functionalized CNT (CNT-SH), respectively. Additionally, EPR investigation of CdSe quantum dot-TrGO hybrid material reveals complete quenching of the TrGO EPR signal due to direct chemical attachment and electronic coupling. Our work confirms that EPR is a suitable tool to detect spin density changes in different functionalized nanocarbon materials and can contribute to improved understanding of electronic coupling effects in nanocarbon-nanoparticle hybrid nano-composites promising for various electronic and optoelectronic applications.

Thiolated Carbon Nanotubes/CdSe Quantum Dot Based Hybrid Solar Cells with Improved Long-Term Stability

In this work, the development of room-temperature solution-processed hybrid solar cells based on carbon nanotubes (CNT) - CdSe quantum dot (QD) hybrid material incorporated into a layer of conjugated polymer poly [2,6-(4,4-bis-(2-ethylhexyl)-4H-cyclopenta [2,1-b;3,4-b′] dithiophene)-alt-4,7-(2,1,3-benzothiadiazole)], PCPDTBT, has been demonstrated. Incorporation of multi walled CNTs helps to improve the long-term efficiency of the solar cells in respect of power conversion efficiency (PCE) and short-circuit current density (Jsc) compared to QD only based devices. For the formation of the hybrid material hexadecylamine (HDA)/ trioctylphosphine oxide (TOPO) capped CdSe QDs were attached to CNTs by engineering the interface between CNTs and CdSe QDs by introducing thiol functional groups to CNTs. Initial PCE values of about 1.9 % under AM1.5G illumination have been achieved for this hybrid CNT-CdSe photovoltaic device. Furthermore, the long term stability of the photovoltaic performance of the devices was investigated and found superior to CdSe QD only based devices. About 90 % of the original PCE remained after storage in a glove box for almost one year without any further encapsulation. It is assumed that the improvement is mainly due to the thiol-functionalization of the CNT interface leading to a strong binding of CdSe QDs and a resulting preservation of the nanomorphology of the hybrid film over time.