Measurement of interchain and intrachain exciton hopping barriers in luminescent polymer.

The integrated photoluminescence intensity in thin films of 'Super Yellow' copolymer has been analyzed using a Mott-like temperature dependence. This has enabled us to observe contributions from two emission channels, indicative of exciton recombination proceeding from two distinct origins. At high temperature, interchain thermally activated exciton energy transfer and migration dominates, resulting in large scale quenching of the integrated emission intensity and hence the photoluminescence quantum yield. However, at relatively low temperature, an additional increase of the integrated emission intensity occurs. This new channel of emission has been attributed to recombination from excitons where intrachain exciton energy transfer between adjacent subunits of the copolymer backbone becomes hindered. The activation energy barriers that control both of these emission channels have been obtained and are correlated with chain backbone degrees of freedom.

Long range energy transfer in conjugated polymer sequential bilayers.

Steady-state and time-resolved photoluminescence have been used to investigate the optical properties of bilayer and blend films made from poly(9,9-dioctyl-fluorene-2,7-diyl) (PFO) and poly[2-methoxy-5-(2-ethylhexyloxy)-1,4-phenylenevinylene] (MEH PPV). Energy transfer has been observed in both systems. From steady-state photoluminescence measurements, the energy transfer was characterized by the effective enhancement of the MEH PPV emission intensity after exciting the donor states. Relatively faster decays for the PFO donor emission have been observed in the blends as well as in the bilayer structures, confirming effective energy transfer in both structures. In contrast to the bilayers, the time decay of the acceptor emission in the blends presents a long decay component, which was assigned to the exciplex formation in these samples. For the blends the acceptor emission is in fact a composition of exciplex and MEH PPV emissions, the later being due to Förster energy transfer from PFO. In the bilayers, the exciplex is not observed and temperature dependence photoluminescence measurements show that exciton migration has no significant contribution to the energy transfer. The efficiency and very long range of the energy transfer in the bilayers is explained assuming a surface-surface interaction geometry where the donor/acceptor distances involved are much longer than the common Förster radius.