Effects of aggregation on the emissive properties of PPV oligomers

PMSE 1

Gizelle A. Sherwood, gsherwoo@andrew.cmu.edu1, Ryan Cheng, ryanchen@andrew.cmu.edu1, Tim M. Smith, tsmith2@richmond.edu2, Jurjen Wildeman3, David J. Yaron, yaron@cmu.edu1, and Linda A. Peteanu, peteanu@andrew.cmu.edu1. (1) Department of Chemistry, Carnegie Mellon University, 4400 Fifth Avenue, Pittsburgh, PA 15213, (2) Department of Chemistry, University of Richmond, Gottwald Center for the Sciences, B-100, Richmond, VA 23173, (3) Department of Polymer Chemistry, University of Groningen, Nijenborgh, Netherlands
The recent upsurge in applications using fluorescent conjugated polymers such as MEH-PPV drives the need for understanding how morphology affects emission and charge migration. Due to the complexity of polymers, there is a parallel effort to ‘build-up' understanding of their features via a detailed study of important electronic and photo-physical properties of phenylene vinylene oligomers studied either in solution or surface cast. These have remarkably structured and reproducible absorption and emission spectra. Here we use bulk fluorescence emission and single-aggregate fluorescence microscopy to measure the aggregate emission spectra as a function of both the oligomer length and aggregate size. The results indicate that aggregates of long oligomers may differ in fundamental ways from their more well-studied counterparts formed from short oligomers. Our studies are motivated by the likelihood that aggregates of long oligomers provide a better model system for the effects of inter-chain interactions in polymers than do short-chain aggregates.
 

New Concepts in Polymeric Materials
8:00 AM-11:20 AM, Sunday, August 19, 2007 Westin Boston Waterfront -- Grand Ballroom D, Oral

Division of Polymeric Materials: Science & Engineering

The 234th ACS National Meeting, Boston, MA, August 19-23, 2007