A Comparative Study of the Photophysics in Polyfluorenes and Polyfluorenes with Polyphenylene Dendron Sidechains

The cw absorption, steady state photoluminescence (PL), photoinduced absorption (PA), PL-detected magnetic resonance (PLDMR), and the time resolved PL of a novel polyfluorene (PF) prepared with bulky polyphenylene dendrimer substituents are compared with those of (PF) with ethyl-hexyl substituents. We show that the dendronic sidechains suppress the contribution from unwanted low energetic emission, yielding a polymer with pure blue emission. The sidechains also strongly alter the dynamics of the excited entities. In particular, the time-resolved PL and temperature-dependence of the cw PL from 20-320 K reveal distinct singlet exciton (SE) dynamics in the polymer films, while the behavior in solution is essentially the same. However, the PA results show that the dynamics of polarons and triplet excitons (TEs) are similar, and the PLDMR shows that the interaction between the SEs and polarons are also similar.