A series of π conjugated systems were studied by absorption, photoluminescence and vibrational spectroscopy. As is common for these systems, a linear relationship between the positioning of the absorption and photoluminescence maxima plotted against inverse conjugation length is observed. The relationships are in good agreement with the simple particle in a box method, one of the earliest descriptions of the properties of one-dimensional organic molecules. In addition to the electronic transition energies, it was observed that the Stokes shift also exhibited a well-defined relationship with increasing conjugation length, implying a correlation between the electron-vibrational coupling and chain length. This correlation is further examined using Raman spectroscopy, whereby the integrated Raman scattering is seen to behave superlinearly with chain length. There is a clear indication that the vibrational activity and thus nonradiative decay processes are controllable through molecular structure. The correlations between the Stokes energies and the vibrational structure are also observed in a selection of PPV based polymers and a clear trend of increasing luminescence efficiency with decreasing vibrational activity and Stokes shift is observable. The implications of such structure property relationships in terms of materials design are discussed.
Photoluminescence intensity PL measurements were taken for a range of PmPV concentrations, in which HiPco single walled carbon nanotubes (SWNTs) at 100%, 10%, 1%, 0.1%, 0.01% and 0% mass fractions were added. The PL intensity of the composite was shown to decrease for all mass fractions, relative to the polymer up to 1.56x10-3g/l of PmPV, above which there is an initial increase in the composite emission yield with respect to the polymer. This increase is associated with an interaction within the composite, which results in a decrease in polymer aggregate formation, which has been shown to quench intensity yields. Within the concentration range studied 5.9x10-8g/l to 2g/l the photoluminescence intensity yield for each system is highly non linear. Previously the ratio of the maximum PL intensity of the composite, which includes both, bound and unbound polymer chains, and the maximum PL intensity of the polymer, which includes only unbound polymer chains was plotted as a function of polymer concentration. From this the authors calculated the amount of free polymer within each composite and derived a model, which showed that as the polymer concentration is lowered the bundles break up until isolated SWNTs are stable at low concentrations. In particular for their 100% mass fraction polymer/HiPco SWNT it was shown that individual nanotubes are stable in solutions ~3x10-5kg/m3. Here we utilize this approach and results indicate that as the mass fraction of nanotubes in reduced, individual nanotubes are stable at higher polymer concentrations. In particular for our 100% mass fraction results indicate that below ~1.5x10-4g/l individual nanotubes are stable. This result indicates that the choice of polymer and or solvent has a significant effect on the debundling and aggregation within these systems.
The synthesis of a series of PPV derivative polymers by the Wittig-Horner reaction is described. The structure of each polymer is varied and the effects of these variations on the optical properties is explored. The effects of alkyloxy side chains is observed between the PPV derivatives Poly(-p-phenylvinylene-co-2,5-bis-octyloxy phenylvinylene.) PPV-OPV and Poly (para-2,5-bis-(n-octyloxy)-phenylvinylene) POPV. The phenyl units of the soluble PPV derivative POPV are replaced by alternate naphthyl units in the polymer Poly(2,5-bis(n-octyloxy)-1,4-phenylene vinylene-1,5-bis(n-octyloxy)-2,6-naphthylene vinylene) POPN-ONV and then fully by naphthyl units in Poly(2,6-bis-(n-octyloxy)-1,5-NaphthyleneVinylene) PONV. The addition of alkyloxy sidechains served to red shift the fluorescence emission as expected. The systematic conversion of phenyl to naphthyl units blue shifted the emission considerably while reducing the Stokes shift. There is evidence to suggest some localization of the pi electrons over the aromatic units of the polymer backbone. PONV is shown to have greater stability towards photo-oxidation then either POPV or PPV-OPV.
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