Photon-assisted nanostructures of self-assembled soft materials

Controlled molecular and nanostructures of soft and hybrid materials are being studied for developing high-performance electronic devices such as solar cells, displays, memories, and sensors. Because these photoelectronic devices often consist of thin constituent layers of various soft and hybrid materials, conventional techniques, such as conduction, convection, and solvent vapor annealing—in which all constituent layers are exposed to heat and/or solvent source—are undesirable. The development of high-performance photoelectronic devices with controlled nanostructures of soft and hybrid materials requires alternative approaches that ensure a localized control of the nanostructures without harming the adjacent components. Recent advances in photon-assisted techniques based on photothermal conversion allow such localized control of the nanostructures of emerging materials. This review provides a comprehensive overview of the state-of-the-art photon-assisted technologies used to control the nanostructures of the emerging soft self-assembled materials, including self-assembled block copolymers, organic-inorganic halide perovskites, MOFs, and nanocomposites with a variety of low-dimensional nanomaterials of carbon nanotubes, graphenes, and transition metal dichalcogenides. Photothermal techniques involving light-to-heat conversion have been introduced, leading to the successful development of remotely and locally controlled nanostructures that are suitable for a variety of photoelectronic and electrochemical devices.