The Characteristics of the Metal-Free and Non-Conjugated Polymer Film with Self-Assembled Nanoparticles

Abstract

It is shown in this paper that a polymer, MA-PEG 1000-DGEBA (MP1D), exhibits antireflection, substrate-dependent photoluminescence (SDP), wide band-gap, and photoconduction characterization. MP1D was synthesized from maleic anhydride, polyethylene glycol 1000, and bisphenol-A diglycidyl ether. Self-assembled nanoparticles embedded in MP1D film and ranging from 2.5 to 31.6 nm are observed, which could be expected as scatterers to enhance light trapping and extraction. The size of the nanoparticle increases with the concentration of the MP1D solution. Besides solution concentration, the nanoparticle dimension could be modified by the chain length of polyethylene glycol in the polymer synthesis. The effects of solution concentration, annealing temperature, annealing period, and substrate on the photoluminescence (PL) of MP1D films are examined. Increasing solution concentration increases PL intensity. However, aggregation-caused quenching is explicit as the solution concentration exceeds 100 mM. PL intensity increases with annealing temperature, which could be attributed to crystallinity improvement. PL intensity increases with increasing the annealing period from 0.5 to 2 h. Nonetheless, as the annealing period exceeds 2 h, PL quenching is emerging, which could be due to aggregation. It is expected that MP1D could be a promising candidate for host materials and MP1D film could play a multifunctional role (antireflective and light-trapping functions) in optoelectronics.