Determination of molecular orientational order in cold-stretched poly(p-phenylene vinylene) thin films by DECODER 13C NMR

The properties of poly(p-phenylene vinylene) (PPV) films depend on the degree of orientational order present in the films. Recently, Dermaut et al. reported a novel cold-stretching technique (Macromolecules 33, 5634-5637 (2000)) in which chain alignment can be introduced into PPV precursor films by uniaxially stretching them prior to the thermal elimination reaction that forms PPV. The two-dimensional direction exchange with correlation for orientation-distribution evaluation and reconstruction (DECODER) 13C NMR technique was applied to both unstretched PPV films and PPV films that were uniaxially cold stretched to a draw ratio lambda = l/l0 = 5. The unstretched films were found to be moderately ordered, comprised of a component present at 80% with a Gaussian distribution of 60 degrees fwhm, while the remaining 20% is isotropically distributed. A distribution of 9 degrees +/- 3 degrees fwhm was measured by NMR in good agreement with IR dichroism measurements for the uniaxially cold-stretched films, establishing that a high degree of orientational order can be introduced by cold stretching PPV films.