Probing the molecular orientation of a single conjugated polymer via nano-gap SERS

Marshall, Addison R L; Roberts, Matthew; Gierschner, Johannes; Bouillard, Jean Sebastien G.; Adawi, Ali M.

Abstract

Determining the molecular orientation at the single molecule level is of key importance for a wide range of applications ranging from molecular electronic devices to biomedical applications. In this work surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) was used to probe the light-emitting conjugated polymer F8-PFB at the single molecule level using nanoparticles on an extended metallic film nanogap. The directional field enhancement of the nanogap combined with density functional theory (DFT) calculations was used to determine the orientation of the molecule. This analysis revealed that the spin-coated conjugated polymer preferentially aligns its molecular chains parallel to the metallic substrate. The integration of this approach in nanofabrication and synthesis will have a profound impact on different fields ranging from molecular electronic devices to biomedical applications.

Citation

Marshall, A. R. L., Roberts, M., Gierschner, J., Bouillard, J. S. G., & Adawi, A. M. (2019). Probing the molecular orientation of a single conjugated polymer via nano-gap SERS. ACS Applied Polymer Materials, 1(5), 1175-1180. https://doi.org/10.1021/acsapm.9b00180

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Apr 23, 2019
• Online Publication Date: Apr 23, 2019
• Publication Date: May 10, 2019
• Deposit Date: May 1, 2019
• Publicly Available Date: May 1, 2019
• Journal: ACS Applied Polymer Materials
• Electronic ISSN: 2637-6105
• Publisher: American Chemical Society
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 1
• Issue: 5
• Pages: 1175-1180
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1021/acsapm.9b00180
• Public URL: https://hull-repository.worktribe.com/output/1693985
• Publisher URL: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acsapm.9b00180
• Additional Information: This document is the Accepted Manuscript version of a Published Work that appeared in final form in ACS applied polymer materials, copyright © American Chemical Society after peer review and technical editing by the publisher. To access the final edited and published work see https://doi.org/10.1021/acsapm.9b00180