Engineering the Spatial Arrangement of Au–C60 Heterostructures

• Published in: Chemistry of materials 2021-07, Vol.33 (13), p.5268-5275
• Main Authors: Xu, Wenjia, Chen, Shuaipeng, Xiao, Ruixue, Zong, Jianpeng, Feng, Yuhua, Chen, Hongyu
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• ISSN: 0897-4756; 1520-5002
• DOI: 10.1021/acs.chemmater.1c01360

As important members of the fullerene family, C60 and its derivatives have become the most popular N-type organic narrow-band gap semiconductor. Expanding synthetic control over its hybrid nanostructures has become a major challenge. In this work, dimethylformamide was used to significantly reduce the rate of C60 precipitation, making it possible to synthesize a series of Au–C60 hybrid nanostructures, including a core–shell structure with a tunable shell thickness. On this basis, strong ligand-mediated interfacial energy controlled the formation of Au–C60 Janus structures with a tunable size of the C60 domain. The charge separation efficiencies of different Au–C60 hybrid structures were systematically studied. The photocurrent generation and transient fluorescence showed significantly improved charge separation, which was attributed to the physical separation of the Au and C60 domains. We believe that mechanistically understanding the design and synthesis of intricate Janus architectures would help future efforts in functional exploration.