Directional Alignment of Polyfluorene Copolymers at Patterned Solid-Liquid Interfaces

Polyfluorene and its derivatives have been recognized as efficient light-emitting semiconductors. However, directional alignment of polyfluorene copolymers at a large scale has rarely been observed, in particular for the two relatively more amorphous members of poly-9,9-dioctylfluorene-co-bethiadisazole (F8BT) and poly-(9,9-dioctylfluorenyl-2,7-diyl)-co-(N,N0-diphenyl)-N,N′di(p-butyl-oxy-pheyl)-1,4-diamino-benzene) (PFB) molecules. Furthermore, the directional alignment of PFB has not been observed so far due to the triphenylamine units in its molecular structures. We present, in this work, a solution-processible method to achieve large-scale alignment of F8BT and PFB molecules into fibers as long as millimeters in a defined direction. Spin-coating the polymer film on to a glass substrate patterned by one-dimensional dielectric nano-grating structures through interference lithography and subsequent modification using 1,5-pentanediol have been used in all of the preparation procedures. Polymer fibers have been obtained in an arrangement parallel to the grating lines. The microscopic, spectroscopic, and photoconductive performances verified the formation and the quality of these directionally-aligned polymeric fibers.