The development of energy conversion and storage devices is at the forefront of research geared towards a sustainable future. However, there are numerous issues that prevent the widespread use of these technologies including cost, performance and durability. These limitations can be directly related to the materials used. In particular, the design and fabrication of nanostructured hybrid materials is expected to provide breakthroughs for the advancement of these technologies. This talk will discuss block copolymers as an emerging and powerful yet affordable tool to structure-direct nanomaterials with precise control over structural dimensions, composition and spatial arrangement of materials in composites. After providing an introduction to block copolymer hybrid materials design, highlights will be provided of some of the most recent examples of block copolymer structure-directed nanomaterials for photovoltaic, battery and fuel cell applications. In each case insights are provided into the various underlying fundamental chemical, thermodynamic and kinetic formation principles enabling general and relatively inexpensive wet-polymer chemistry methodologies for the efficient creation of multiscale functional materials for energy conversion and storage applications. Examples will include nanostructured transition metal oxides and semiconductors, ceramic-carbon composites, as well as ceramic-carbon-metal nanoparticle composites with morphologies ranging from hexagonally arranged cylinders to three-dimensional bi-continuous cubic network structures. References 1.) J. G. Werner, S. S. Johnson, V. Vijay and U. Wiesner, Carbon-Sulfur Composites from Cylindrical and Gyroidal Mesoporous Carbons with Tunable Properties in Lithium-Sulfur Batteries, Chem. Mater. 27 (2015), 3349–3357 2.) W. Zhang, M. Saliba, D. T. Moore, S. K. Pathak, M. T. Hörantner, T. Stergiopoulos, S. D. Stranks, G. E. Eperon, J. A. Webber, A. Abate, A. Sadhanala, S. Yao, Y. Chen, R. H. Friend, L. A. Estroff, U. Wiesner, H. J. Snaith, Ultra-smooth organic-inorganic perovskite thin-film formation and crystallization for efficient planar heterojunction solar cells, Nat. Commun. 6 (2015), 6142. 3.) K. W. Tan, B. Jung, J. G. Werner, E. R. Rhoades, M. O. Thompson, U. Wiesner, Transient Laser Heating Induced Hierarchical Porous Structures from Block Copolymer Directed Self-Assembly, Science 349 (2015), 54-58.

Block copolymer-based composition and morphology control in nanostructured hybrids for energy conversion and storage

251st National Meeting (2016)

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