Grazing incidence X-ray diffraction of a photoaligned nematic semiconductor

Dröge, Stefan; Khalifah, Manea S Al; O'Neill, Mary; Thomas, Huw E.; Simmonds, Henje S.; Macdonald, J. Emyr; Aldred, Matthew P.; Vlachos, Panos; Kitney, Stuart P.; Löbbert, Andreas; Kelly, Stephen M.

Abstract

Grazing incidence X-ray diffraction is used to find the thin film morphology of an extended molecule with an irregular alternating fluorene - thiophene structure, which is used to obtain linearly polarized electroluminescence and the photovoltaic effect. The material has a room temperature nematic glassy phase and is uniaxially aligned in the plane of the film using photoalignment techniques. Two distinct intermolecular separations of 0.45 and 1.5 nm are identified showing that the molecules are lamellar. The lamellae stack with only local order and the two short axes of the lamellae have no preferred orientation at the surface or bulk of the film. Neighboring molecules show a wide range of longitudinal displacements along the axis of the director, as expected for a nematic liquid crystal with no positional order. There is, however, a dominant feature corresponding to a longitudinal offset of 0.51 nm. Unlike some other fluorene-containing semiconductors where microphase separation of the side chains inhibits close packing of neighboring molecules, the lamellar structure and 0.45 intermolecular spacing found here allows π-π intermolecular interactions for efficient carrier transport. We obtain a room temperature hole mobility up to 3.4 × 10 -3 cm 2 V -1 s -1 using a time-of-flight technique. © 2009 American Chemical Society.

Citation

Dröge, S., Khalifah, M. S. A., O'Neill, M., Thomas, H. E., Simmonds, H. S., Macdonald, J. E., …Kelly, S. M. (2009). Grazing incidence X-ray diffraction of a photoaligned nematic semiconductor. Journal of Physical Chemistry B, 113(1), 49-53. https://doi.org/10.1021/jp803379a

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Publication Date: Jan 8, 2009
• Deposit Date: Nov 13, 2014
• Journal: Journal Of Physical Chemistry B
• Print ISSN: 1520-6106
• Electronic ISSN: 1520-5207
• Publisher: American Chemical Society
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 113
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 49-53
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1021/jp803379a
• Keywords: Grazing incidence X-ray diffraction, organic semiconductor, photoalignment, nematic liquid crystal,
• Public URL: https://hull-repository.worktribe.com/output/461310
• Publisher URL: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/jp803379a