Electrosynthesis, characterization and photoconducting performance of copolymer poly(terthiophene + sexithiophene + TiO2)/ITO composite material

In the present work, a new composite material poly(3T + 6T + TiO2) was electrochemically synthesized. This composite material was synthesized in a solution of (CH2Cl2/TBAP) containing the monomers (terthiophene), (sexithiophene) and semiconductor (TiO2) particles. The preparedsamples were characterized electrochemically by cyclic voltamperometry (CV) and spectrometry analysis by scanning electron microscopy (SEM), ultraviolet-visible (UV-Vis) absorption spectroscopy, energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDX) and fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), respectively. The effect of TiO2 concentration in the solution on dispersed microparticle entity and on the photocurrent response was investigated. The results showed that TiO2 particles were dispersed and codeposited into the copolymer poly(3T + 6T + TiO2) matrix, and titanium atom was confirmed by EDX spectra. From SEM images, the TiO2 has a spherical shape and micrometer size. The FTIR spectrum indicated that titanium dioxide do not show a significant modification in terms of band shape and no interaction between polymers and TiO2 particles. Furthermore, the results showed that the composite films with different amounts of TiO2 exhibit good photocurrent properties which imply that these composites films can be used in various fields, such as photoelectrochemical applications as photovoltaic cells.