An investigation into the excitation migration in polyfluorene solutions via temperature dependent fluorescence anisotropy

Fluorescence anisotropy of dilute polyfluorene polymer solutions has been used to show that two processes, exciton migration and conformational relaxation (twisting of part of the chain), occur within polyfluorene polymers of 20 or more repeat units. The former process is dominant and temperature independent for high excitation energy but, as the chain length is decreased, exciton migration is eliminated and the conformational relaxation becomes the only mechanism by which excited state energy relaxation to the emission site can occur. When the polymers are excited in the absorption band tails, again no migration is observed but conformational relaxation is still present.