Events
Spectroscopy of single conjugated polymers and aggregates
May 2, 2017 at 4:30pm/36-428 RLE Haus Room
David Vanden Bout
University of Texas, Department of Chemistry
A comprehensive understanding about the structure-photophysics correlations in conjugated polymers (CPs) is crucial for its development in optoelectronics. Unfortunately, this has remained elusive to date largely due to the macroscopic heterogeneity in both structural and photophysical properties of polymer materials. With single molecule/aggregate spectroscopy, we performed a systematic examination on the relationship between structure and important photophysical properties from single polymer chain up to bulk state. Single polymer chain conformation was studied using polarization spectroscopy to examine how side-chains affect folding of the polymers. The effects of this folding are then correlated with differences in both single molecule spectra as well as transient “blinking”. Single molecules and aggregates of a variety of polythiophenes were examined. Tunable interchain morphologies, i.e., packing order and distance, were achieved through altering the regioregularity, size of side-chains, and backbone alterations. It was noted that the polymers switched between either dominant interchain coupling or intrachain coupling based on their planarity and packing distance.
David A. Vanden Bout is a Professor in the Department of Chemistry. His research is in the area of organic materials for electronic applications. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Texas and was a National Science Foundation postdoctoral fellow at the University of Minnesota. He came back to UT-Austin in 1997 and has won a number of awards for his research including an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship, Research Corporation Cottrell Scholar Award, and a NSF CAREER Award. His innovative teaching has been recognized with a CNS Teaching Excellence Award, President’s Associates Teaching Excellence Award and a Regent’s Outstanding Teaching Award. For the past three years he has served as the Associate Dean for Undergraduate Education in the College of Natural Sciences.
