Nanocomposites composed of poly (N-vinyl carbazole) functionalized carbon dots and their redox properties: Towards promising opto-electro transfer devices

Poly (N-vinyl carbazole) functionalized carbon dots (PVK-CDots) exhibiting significant photoinduced redox properties show great potential to be applied in opto-electro devices and systems. Here, we further make sure the PVK-CDots are promising candidates for developing solar cells after we designed a “one-pot” procedure to prepare PVK-CDots nanocomposites with high carbon content. The “one-pot” procedure is such that when citric acid is thermally carbonized into a carbon core, the N-vinyl carbazole is thermally initiated in situ to polymerize on the surface of the carbon core as passivation layer. The prepared PVK-CDots containing very high carbon content (about 36 %) are strongly absorptive and therefore effective in photon harvesting and also brightly fluorescent across the visible spectral region, which as expected exhibits significant photoinduced redox properties. Taking perovskite solar cell as an example, the PVK-CDots are qualified to act as a hole transport layer (HTL) material according to the alignment of energy levels.