Hosted by: Chuck Black

emiconducting polymers are central to emerging optoelectronic applications and tremendous efforts have gone towards establishing reliable structure-property-performance relationships. Among the essential structural parameters that have a direct impact on device performance, the degree of order of the semiconducting polymer is the most crucial, yet least characterized parameter, which makes designs and improvements towards next-generation materials difficult. In this presentation, recent successes in our laboratory towards quantifying semi-crystalline order of semiconducting polymers will be presented. We determine what correlations exist, if any, between X-ray, DSC, and optical measures of order in P3HT and its PCBM-61 blends. Additionally, we employ energy filtered transmission electron microscopy (EF-TEM) in combination with the measured degrees of crystallinity to see whether any insight can be gained into the structure of the P3HT amorphous phase in the BHJ, and discuss whether any of these measures provides insight into OPV device performance.