The ability to tailor hierarchical bottom-up assembly of organic and inorganic nanomaterials and yield complex architectures offer exceptional potential in developing complex and functional nanocomposites for use in optics, electronics, optoelectronics, sensors, catalysis, magnetic materials and devices. Nanoribbon-shaped organic/inorganic nanocomposites have garnered increasing attention in recent years.

Recently, prof. Juan Peng and coworkers reported a robust hierarchical bottom-up assembly strategy for crafting nanoribbon-shaped nanocomposites composed of conjugated polymer poly(3-hexylthiophene) (P3HT) and plasmonic gold nanorods (AuNRs). First, P3HT-SH nanofibers were formed due to interchain - stacking. Upon the addition of AuNRs-DDT, P3HT-SH nanofibers were transformed into nanoribbons decorated with the aligned AuNRs on the surface. Quite intriguingly, when P3HT-SH nanoribbons and nanofibers are coexisted, AuNRs and Au nanoparticles (AuNPs) are found to selectively decorate P3HT-SH nanoribbons and nanofibers, respectively. These hierarchically assembled nanocomposites exhibited the broadened and red-shifted absorption bands of AuNRs and displayed quenched photoluminescence of P3HT. Such conjugated polymer/plasmonic nanorod nanocomposites may find potential applications in many fields, such as building blocks for complex superstructures, optical biosensors, and optoelectronic devices.

This work was collaborated with Prof. Zhiqun Lin in Georgia Institute of Technology. The first author is Shuang Pan. This work was published on Angewandte Chemie International Edition, selected as Very Important Paper (VIP), and featured on the back Cover. See details: Shuang Pan, Luze He, Juan Peng*, Feng Qiu, Zhiqun Lin*, Chemical-bonding-directed hierarchical assembly of nanoribbon-shaped nanocomposites of gold nanorods and poly(3-hexylthiophene), Angew. Chem. Int. Ed., 2016, DOI: 10.1002/anie.201603189. 

Article links：http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/anie.201603189/pdf