Korolkov Vladimir V, Summerfield Alex, Murphy Alanna, Amabilino David B, Watanabe Kenji, Taniguchi Takashi, Beton Peter H
School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Nottingham, Nottingham, NG7 2RD, UK.
School of Chemistry, University of Nottingham, Nottingham, NG7 2RD, UK.
Nat Commun. 2019 Apr 4;10(1):1537. doi: 10.1038/s41467-019-09571-6.
Real-space images of polymers with sub-molecular resolution could provide valuable insights into the relationship between morphology and functionality of polymer optoelectronic devices, but their acquisition is problematic due to perceived limitations in atomic force microscopy (AFM). We show that individual thiophene units and the lattice of semicrystalline spin-coated films of polythiophenes (PTs) may be resolved using AFM under ambient conditions through the low-amplitude (≤ 1 nm) excitation of higher eigenmodes of a cantilever. PT strands are adsorbed on hexagonal boron nitride near-parallel to the surface in islands with lateral dimensions ~10 nm. On the surface of a spin-coated PT thin film, in which the thiophene groups are perpendicular to the interface, we resolve terminal CH-groups in a square arrangement with a lattice constant 0.55 nm from which we can identify abrupt boundaries and also regions with more slowly varying disorder, which allow comparison with proposed models of PT domains.
具有亚分子分辨率的聚合物实空间图像可以为聚合物光电器件的形态与功能之间的关系提供有价值的见解，但由于原子力显微镜（AFM）存在的一些局限性，获取此类图像存在问题。我们表明，在环境条件下，通过对悬臂梁的高阶本征模进行低振幅（≤1纳米）激发，可以使用AFM分辨聚噻吩（PTs）半结晶旋涂膜中的单个噻吩单元和晶格。PT链吸附在六方氮化硼上，在横向尺寸约为10纳米的岛中近乎平行于表面。在旋涂PT薄膜的表面，其中噻吩基团垂直于界面，我们分辨出以0.55纳米晶格常数呈方形排列的末端CH基团，从中我们可以识别出 abrupt 边界以及无序变化较慢的区域，这有助于与所提出的PT域模型进行比较。 （注：原文中“abrupt”可能有误，推测可能是“abrupt”，若有误请根据正确内容调整翻译）
