Invention of 2D thiophene nanosheet with 3.5nm thickness!

Recently a team of sientisst have researched and developed a new 2D supramolecular thiophene nanosheet with 3.5nm of thickness.

So far graphene have played major role in electronic materials with 2D sheet structure but in the case of graphene chemical functionalization and size control are difficult and impossible. in this case, a promising material, thiophene polymers, have been actively rolled  as electronic materials.

Field effect transistors (FET), organic electroluminescece, organic solar cells  and other electrical materials are the example of thiophene applications but, for the manufacturing of thiophene thin film requires much enrgy and epensive quipment are the problem faced.

Thiophene nanosheet with high crystallinity is required in sol gel fabrication method in the polymer solution

Researchers have discovered that an alternating copolymer, in which a thiophene compounds and flexible ethylene glycol chain are alternately connected, is folded in some organic solvents in such a way that the thiophene units are stacked each other, and the folded copolymers self assemble into a 2D sheet structure.

They said that the length of the polymer used in this work is
approximately 80nm, the thickness of the sheet is only 3.5nm due to the folded conformation of the copolymer.

Further the researchers expained that The arrangement of the thiophene units in the nanosheet was same to as that manufactured by vacuum vapor deposition (CVD) of low molecular weight thiophene compounds. Therefore, their thiophene nanosheets are
feasible to the application of organic electronics devices.

The lateral size of the nanosheet was manageble by tuning the concentration of the polymer solution. The chemical modification of the nanosheet surface was also possible by appling the other functional unit at the terminals of the copolymer.

For instance, a simple and a low cost method is that it is possible to build single layer by vaccum deposition.

Source: Internet