Masters, R.C., Stehling, N., Abrams, K. et al. (8 more authors) (2019) Mapping polymer molecular order in the SEM with secondary electron hyperspectral imaging. Advanced Science, 6 (5). 1801752. ISSN 2198-3844
Abstract
Understanding nanoscale molecular order within organic electronic materials is a crucial factor in building better organic electronic devices. At present, techniques capable of imaging molecular order within a polymer are limited in resolution, accuracy, and accessibility. In this work, presented are secondary electron (SE) spectroscopy and secondary electron hyperspectral imaging, which make an exciting alternative approach to probing molecular ordering in poly(3‐hexylthiophene) (P3HT) with scanning electron microscope‐enabled resolution. It is demonstrated that the crystalline content of a P3HT film is reflected by its SE energy spectrum, both empirically and through correlation with nano‐Fourier‐transform infrared spectroscopy, an innovative technique for exploring nanoscale chemistry. The origin of SE spectral features is investigated using both experimental and modeling approaches, and it is found that the different electronic properties of amorphous and crystalline P3HT result in SE emission with different energy distributions. This effect is exploited by acquiring hyperspectral SE images of different P3HT films to explore localized molecular orientation. Machine learning techniques are used to accurately identify and map the crystalline content of the film, demonstrating the power of an exciting characterization technique.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2019 The Authors. Published by WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Sheffield |
Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Engineering (Sheffield) > Department of Materials Science and Engineering (Sheffield) |
Funding Information: | Funder Grant number LEVERHULME TRUST (THE) VP1-2014-011 ENGINEERING AND PHYSICAL SCIENCE RESEARCH COUNCIL (EPSRC) EP/M025020/1 ENGINEERING AND PHYSICAL SCIENCE RESEARCH COUNCIL (EPSRC) EP/N008065/1 |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Sheffield |
Date Deposited: | 31 Jan 2019 15:56 |
Last Modified: | 16 Nov 2021 13:06 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Wiley Open Access |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.1002/advs.201801752 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:141660 |