SUPRAmolecularly Templated Synthesis of Homochiral CARBON Nanotubes for Photovoltaic Devices

The use of carbon nanotubes (CNTs) in the development of next generation high performance solar cells is one of the ways to have an efficient sunlight harvesting, and is currently one of the hot topics in the field of organic solar cells. However, the route towards CNT-based materials on material science for nanotechnological applications such as solar energy transducer devices is severely limited by the difficulties of producing structurally controlled CNTs (e.g., diameter, length and helicity to name a few parameters). The structural control would enable to get, for example, all the semiconductor nanotubes with the same gap. The objective of this multidisciplinary project, SUPRACARBON, is to demonstrate the feasibility of organizing and engineering surfaces with defined chiral host and receptor sites, perhaps aligned in a periodic manner, where catalyst clusters can be hosted. Using these catalysts, the nanotubes should grow following the chirality of the receptor sites.