Photoinduced infrared absorption in polydiacetylene

Photoinduced absorption (PA) is a valuable technique for studying the excitations of conjugated polymer systems. Both vibrational and electronic properties and the interaction between them may be observed for the photoinduced states. Polydiacetylene (PDA) is a particularly good material for such a study, as highly aligned crystalline films are available. Electron correlation effects are generally agreed to be significant in conducting polymers and are particularly strong for PDA. We report here infrared PA measurements on the polydiacetylene PDA-1OH