Dual species emission from single polyfluorene molecules: signatures of stress-induced planarization of single polymer chains

Single chains of the conjugated polymer polyfluorene are shown to exist in two distinct conformational arrangements. Planarization of the chain to the single molecule beta-phase leads to a red shift in the emission and a strong modification of the vibronic progression. Most importantly, this structural rearrangement dramatically affects the photophysical stability on the single molecule level. Single molecule beta-phase emission displays a vastly improved lifetime and much less noise on both the emission intensity and the spectral position. In the absence of signatures of multichromophoric emission on the single molecule level, we propose that the effective conjugation length accounts for most of the physical chain length of the beta-phase.