Structural Heterogeneity in the Localized Excited States of Poly(3-hexylthiophene)

Transient hole-burning and resonantly enhanced Raman spectroscopies are used to probe heterogeneities among localized singlet excitons of poly(3-hexylthiophene) in solution. Transient hole-burning spectroscopy facilitated by population dumping through wavelength-selective stimulated emission exposes inhomogeneous broadening of the exciton absorption band in the near-infrared, as reflected by correlations between stimulated emission and excited-state absorption transition energies. Dump-induced spectral diffusion of the exciton absorption band reflects structural fluctuations in the locally excited polymer. This diffusion is observed to occur slightly faster or slower than the nonequilibrium relaxation that follows direct excitation of the polymer (8-9 ps), with the time scale for diffusion varying with subpopulation: dumping across small vs large band gaps results in diffusion over 5 vs 35 ps, respectively. Furthermore, incomplete spectral relaxation of transient holes reflects that subsets of locally excited structural motifs prepared through photoexcitation cannot interchange through structural fluctuations that occur over the singlet-exciton lifetime. Raman spectra of the C═C/C-C stretching region collected in resonance at energies across the exciton absorption band exhibit frequency and intensity trends (Raman "dispersion") ascribed to variation in the local effective conjugation length. Together, results explicitly reveal heterogeneities among excitonic states associated with variations and fluctuations in local conformational order.