Seeing structural evolution of organic molecular nano-crystallites using 4D scanning confocal electron diffraction (4D-SCED)

Mingjian Wu (), Christina Harreiß, Colin Ophus, Manuel Johnson, Rainer H. Fink and Erdmann Spiecker ()
Additional contact information
Mingjian Wu: Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg
Christina Harreiß: Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg
Colin Ophus: National Center for Electron Microscopy, Molecular Foundry, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Manuel Johnson: Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg
Rainer H. Fink: Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg
Erdmann Spiecker: Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg

Nature Communications, 2022, vol. 13, issue 1, 1-10

Abstract: Abstract Direct observation of organic molecular nanocrystals and their evolution using electron microscopy is extremely challenging, due to their radiation sensitivity and complex structure. Here, we introduce 4D-scanning confocal electron diffraction (4D-SCED), which enables direct in situ observation of bulk heterojunction (BHJ) thin films. 4D-SCED combines confocal electron optic setup with a pixelated detector to record focused spot-like diffraction patterns with high angular resolution, using an order of magnitude lower dose than previous methods. We apply it to study an active layer in organic solar cells, namely DRCN5T:PC71BM BHJ thin films. Structural details of DRCN5T nano-crystallites oriented both in- and out-of-plane are imaged at ~5 nm resolution and dose budget of ~5 e−/Å2. We use in situ annealing to observe the growth of the donor crystals, evolution of the crystal orientation, and progressive enrichment of PC71BM at interfaces. This highly dose-efficient method opens more possibilities for studying beam sensitive soft materials.

Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-022-30413-5 Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:13:y:2022:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-022-30413-5

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-022-30413-5

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().