Probing physical and spectroscopic properties of electrochromic conjugated polymers, copolymers and layered structures

This work details the properties of a copolymer system comprising the ethylenedioxythiophene (EDOT) and bithiophene (BT) monomers. By applying a number of characterisation techniques to various aspects of the copolymer system an insight into its behaviour during redox cycling has been gained. If a copolymer is grown from a feed solution containing two different monomers, the mole fraction of monomers in the resulting copolymer will be determined by the composition of the feed solution and the relative reactivities of the two monomers. Only a small range of feed solutions yield copolymers containing substantial amounts of both components, except for pairs of monomers having very similar reactivities X-ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy (XPS) was introduced as a technique to determine the mole fraction of monomers within a copolymer film and compared with the mole fraction of the feed solution. [Continues.]