Molecular-Scale Imaging Enables Direct Visualization of Molecular Defects and Chain Structure of Conjugated Polymers

Conjugated polymers have become materials of choice for applications ranging from flexible optoelectronics to neuromorphic computing, but their polydispersity and tendency to aggregate pose severe challenges to their precise characterization. Here, the combination of vacuum electrospray deposition (ESD) with scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) is used to acquire, within the same experiment, assembly patterns, full mass distributions, exact sequencing, and quantification of polymerization defects. In a first step, the ESD-STM results are successfully benchmarked against NMR for low molecular mass polymers, where this technique is still applicable. Then, it is shown that ESD-STM is capable of reaching beyond its limits by characterizing, with the same accuracy, samples that are inaccessible to NMR. Finally, a recalibration procedure is proposed for size exclusion chromatography (SEC) mass distributions, using ESD-STM results as a reference. The distinctiveness of the molecular-scale information obtained by ESD-STM highlights its role as a crucial technique for the characterization of conjugated polymers.