No Arabic abstract
Inter- or intramolecular coupling processes between chromophores such as excimer formation or H- and J-aggregation are crucial to describing the photophysics of closely packed films of conjugated polymers. Such coupling is highly distance dependent, and should be sensitive to both fluctuations in the spacing between chromophores as well as the actual position on the chromophore where the exciton localizes. Single-molecule spectroscopy reveals these intrinsic fluctuations in well-defined bi-chromophoric model systems of cofacial oligomers. Signatures of interchromophoric interactions in the excited state - spectral red-shifting and broadening, and a slowing of photoluminescence decay - correlate with each other but scatter strongly between single molecules, implying an extraordinary distribution in coupling strengths. Furthermore, these excimer-like spectral fingerprints vary with time, revealing intrinsic dynamics in the coupling strength within one single dimer molecule, which constitutes the starting point for describing a molecular solid. Such spectral sensitivity to sub-Angstrom molecular dynamics could prove complementary to conventional FRET-based molecular rulers.
We discuss the intriguing photophysics of a giant molecular spoked wheel of pi-conjugated arylenealkynylene chromophores on the single-molecule level. This molecular mesoscopic tructure, C1878H2682, shows fast switching between the 12 identical chromophores since the fluorescence is unpolarised but only one chromophore emits at a time.
We report pressure-dependent transient picosecond and continuous-wave photomodulation studies of disordered and ordered films of 2-methoxy-5-(2-ethylhexyloxy) poly(para-phenylenevinylene). Photoinduced absorption (PA) bands in the disordered film exhibit very weak pressure dependence and are assigned to intrachain excitons and polarons. In contrast, the ordered film exhibits two additional transient PA bands in the midinfrared that blueshift dramatically with pressure. Based on high-order configuration interaction calculations we ascribe the PA bands in the ordered film to excimers. Our work brings insight to the exciton binding energy in ordered films versus disordered films and solutions. The reduced exciton binding energy in ordered films is due to new energy states appearing below the continuum band threshold of the single strand.
Conjugated polymers offer potential for many diverse applications but we still lack a fundamental microscopic understanding of their electronic structure. Elementary photoexcitations - excitons - span only a few nanometres of a molecule, which itself can extend over microns, and how their behaviour is affected by molecular dimensions is not fully understood. For example, where is the exciton formed within a conjugated segment, is it always situated on the same repeat units? Here, we introduce structurally-rigid molecular spoked wheels, 6 nanometres in diameter, as a model of extended pi-conjugation. Single-molecule fluorescence reveals random exciton localisation, leading to temporally-varying emission polarisation. Initially, this random localisation arises after every photon absorption event because of temperature independent spontaneous symmetry breaking. These fast fluctuations are slowed to millisecond timescales following prolonged illumination. Intramolecular heterogeneity is revealed in cryogenic spectroscopy by jumps in transition energy, however, emission polarisation can also switch without a spectral jump occurring, implying long-range homogeneity in local dielectric environment.
Following the identification of the pi bond in graphene, in this work, a pi bond constructed through side-to-side overlap of half-filled 6pz orbitals was observed in a non-carbon crystal of Pb1-xSnxSe (x=0.34) (PSS), a prototype topological crystalline insulator (TCI) and thermoelectric material with a high figure-of-merit (ZT). PSS compounds with a rock-salt type cubic crystal structure was found to consist of sigma bond connected covalent chains of Pb(Sn)-Se with an additional pi bond that is shared as a conjugated system among the four nearest neighbor Pb pairs in square symmetry within all (001) monoatomic layers per cubic unit cell. The pi bond formed with half-filled 6pz orbitals between Pb atoms is consistent with the calculated results from quantum chemistry. The presence of pi bonds was identified and verified with electron energy-loss spectroscopy (EELS) through plasmonic excitations and electron density (ED) mapping via an inverse Fourier transform of X-ray diffraction.
New charge transfer crystals of $pi$-conjugated, aromatic molecules (phenanthrene and picene) as donors were obtained by physical vapor transport. The melting behavior, optimization of crystal growth and the crystal structure is reported for charge transfer salts with (fluorinated) tetracyanoquinodimethane (TCNQ-F$_x$, x=0, 2, 4), which was used as acceptor material. The crystal structures were determined by single-crystal X-ray diffraction. Growth conditions for different vapor pressures in closed ampules were applied and the effect of these starting conditions for crystal size and quality is reported. The process of charge transfer was investigated by geometrical analysis of the crystal structure and by infrared spectroscopy on single crystals. With these three different acceptor strengths and the two sets of donor materials, it is possible to investigate the distribution of the charge transfer systematically. This helps to understand the charge transfer process in this class of materials with $pi$-conjugated donor molecules.