Luminescent Efficiency and Color for Poly(3-butylthiophene) Nanowires Through Metal Coating: Color CCD Confirmation

Abstract

This is a report on the variation of luminescence efficiency and the color of light-emitting poly(3-butylthiophene) (P3BT) nanowires through a nanometer scale Ni or Cu metal coating. This was directly confirmed by means of the measurement of color charge-coupled device (CCD) images. The coaxial hybrid double-layered nanowires of P3BT, coated with a nanometer scale Ni or Cu metal with similar to 10 nm thickness (P3BT/Ni or P3BT/Cu), have been fabricated through a sequentially electrochemical synthetic method. We observed an 80-90 times enhancement of the laser confocal microscope (LCM) photoluminescence (PL) peak intensity for an isolated single strand of the P3BT nanowires after coating with Ni or Cu metal. We confirmed the variation of the luminescence color and PL intensity for the nanowires by measurements of the LCM PL spectra. We can explain the enhancement of PL efficiency and color tuning of P3BT/Ni and P3BT/Cu hybrid nanowires in terms of energy and charge-transfer effects in surface plasmon resonance coupling.