Influence of backbone rigidness on single chain conformation of thiophene-based conjugated polymers

Structural order of conjugated polymers at different length scales directs the optoelectronic properties of the corresponding materials; thus it is of critical importance to understand and control conjugated polymer morphology for successful application of these materials in organic optoelectronics. Herein, with the aim of probing the dependence of single chain folding properties on the chemical structure and rigidness of the polymer backbones, single molecule fluorescence spectroscopy was applied to four thiophene-based conjugated polymers. These include regioregular poly(3-hexylthiophene) (RR-P3HT), poly(2,5-bis(3-tetradecylthiophen-2-yl)thieno[3,2-b]thiophene) (PBTTT-14), poly(2,5-bis(3-tetradecylthiophen-2-yl)thiophene-2-yl)thiophen-2-ylthiazolo[5,4-d]thiazole) (PTzQT-12), and poly(3,3-didodecylquaterthiophene)] (PQT-12). Our previous work has shown that RR-P3HT and PBTTT-14 polymer chains fold in their nanostructures, whereas PQT-12 and PTzQT-12 do not fold in their nanostructures. At the single molecule level, it was found that RR-P3HT single chains almost exclusively fold into loosely and strongly aggregated conformations, analogous to the folding properties in nanostructures. PQT-12 displays significant chain folding as well, but only into loosely aggregated conformations, showing an absence of strongly aggregated polymer chains. PBTTT-14 exhibits a significant fraction of rigid polymer chain. The findings made for single molecules of PQT-12 and PBTTT-14 are thus in contrast with the observations made in their corresponding nanostructures. PTzQT-12 appears to be the most rigid and planar conjugated polymer of these four polymers. However, although the presumably nonfolding polymers PQT-12 and PTzQT-12 exhibit less folding than RR-P3HT, there is still a significant occurrence of chain folding for these polymers at the single molecule level. These results suggest that the folding properties of conjugated polymers can be influenced by the architecture of the polymer backbones; however, other factors such as intermolecular stacking interactions, solvent environment, and side chain interactions in corresponding materials should also be taken into account to predict conjugated polymer material morphology.