Luminescence and Picosecond Photo-Induced Absorption of Polyaniline

Abstract

The photoluminescence and photoinduced absorption are reported for leucoemeraldine and emeraldine forms of polyaniline in the picosecond to nanosecond time domain. The importance of bond vibration, charge tunneling and ring rotations in varying relaxation processes is determined. The temperature dependence of the photoluminescence decay time of the leucoemeraldine base dissolved in N-methyl pyrrolidinone is reported. The decay time decreases as the temperature increases. From the Arrhenius plot, the activation energy is estimated to be approx. 0.1 eV. These data suggest that backbone vibrations dominate this photoluminescence decay mechanism. From the comparison of the result to that of the monomer, aniline, it is concluded that a polaron-exciton confined in the basic unit including a ring and adjacent nitrogen atoms is responsible for the photoluminescence. The picosecond photoinduced absorption of emeraldine base films optically pumped at 2.1 eV and probed at 1.5 eV and 2.9 eV are compared with the previously measured picosecond photoinduced bleaching probed at 2.0 eV. While all three of them show initial fast decay, the photoinduced absorption at 1.5 eV does not show a substantial residue on the nanosecond time scale. This is in contrast to the photoinduced bleaching at 2.0 eV and 2.9 eV photoinduced absorption for which more than half of the signal remains even after a few nanoseconds. Preliminary measurements of emeraldine base films at a probe energy of 2.9 eV indicate that the decay slows down when the temperature is lowered. For emeraldine base in N-methyl pyrrolidinone solution, this long lived tail in picosecond photoinduced absorption disappears. These data strongly suggest the importance of the ring-torsion.

Open PDF

Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Jun 29, 1992
Accession Number
ADA260002

Entities

People

  • Arthur J. Epstein
  • J. M. Ginder
  • Keehoon Kim
  • L.b. Lin
  • T. L. Gustafson

Organizations

  • University of Pennsylvania

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Energy and Power Technologies

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Biomedical And Dental Materials
  • Charge Transfer
  • Chemistry
  • Conductive Polymers
  • Dye Lasers
  • Emission Spectra
  • Films
  • Heat Of Activation
  • Hydroxides
  • Laser Pulses
  • Luminescence
  • Nanosecond Time
  • Optical Absorption
  • Picosecond Time
  • Polymers
  • Semi-Flexible Rod Polymers
  • Universities

Readers

  • Chemistry (specifically Chemical Fluorescence)
  • Molecular Photonics/Laser Physics
  • Organic Chemistry

Technology Areas

  • Microelectronics