Amphiphilic molecular design as a rational strategy for tailoring bicontinuous electron donor and acceptor arrays: Photoconductive liquid crystalline oligothiophene-C₆₀ dyads

For tailoring solution-processable optoelectronic thin films, a rational strategy with amphiphilic molecular design is proposed. A donor-acceptor dyad consisting of an oligothiophene and C₆₀, when modified with a hydrophilic wedge on one side and a paraffinic wedge on the other (1_Amphi), forms over a wide temperature range a photoconducting smectic A liquid crystal having bicontinuous arrays of densely packed donor and acceptor units. In contrast, when modified with only paraffinic wedges (1_Lipo), the dyad forms a smectic A liquid crystalline mesophase, which however is poorly conductive. As indicated by an absorption spectral feature along with a synchrotron radiation small-angle X-ray scattering profile, 1_Lipo in the lamellar structure does not adopt a uniform head/tail orientation. Such defective donor and acceptor arrays likely contain a large number of trapping sites, leading to short-lived charge carriers, as observed by a flash photolysis time-resolved microwave conductivity study.