Achievement

Working in collaboration with Prof. Todd Emrick’s research group, IGERT student Felicia Bokel with advisor Prof. Ryan Hayward has advanced the research area of designing polymeric materials for solar cells. They have shown that electron-conducting and hole-conducting materials (p-type conjugated polymer poly(3-hexyl thiophene) (P3HT) with n-type cadmium selenide (CdSe) nanorods) can be paired through solution-state self-assembly into composite nanowires. These composite materials provide pre-organized building blocks for photovoltaic devices with well-defined structures on the diffusion length-scale of an electron-hole pair, providing opportunities to minimize recombination and maximize charge transport for photovoltaic applications. These research results were reported in the March 2010 issue of Macromolecules and highlighted in Bokel’s poster presentation at a recent IGERT meeting where she was one of twenty-four Poster Finalists winners of the IGERT 2011 Poster Competition.