Morphology studies of thin films of polyfluorene: fullerene blends

The formation of thin films of polymer blends by spin-coating from solution is characterised by rapid solvent quenching, a process that results in non-equilibrium morphologies. Thin films of conjugated polymer blends are used as the active material in polymer solar cells, in which the morphology may have drastic effects on device performance. In this thesis results from morphology studies are presented for spin-coated thin films of polyfluorenes and co-polymers of polyfluorene blended with the fullerene derivative [6,6]-phenyl-C61-butyric acid methyl ester (PCBM). The surface morphology was investigated by atomic force microscopy (AFM) and was found to depend on the blend ratio as well as the chemical structure of the blend components. The spin speed, which determines the thickness of the spin-coated thin films, was also found to influence the morphology. Secondary ion mass spectrometry (SIMS) was used for depth profiling of the chemical composition in thin films of poly[(9,9-dioctylfluorenyl-2,7-diyl)-co-5,5-(4´,7´-di-2-thienyl-2´,1´,3´-benzothiadiazole)] (LBPF5) blended with PCBM. The films were found to be vertically phase separated with a four-fold multilayered structure