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Structural deformation of elastic polythiophene with disiloxane moieties under stretching

Polymer Journal volume 52, pages 1273–1278 (2020)Cite this article

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Abstract

For the development of wearable and stretchable devices, insights into the mechanical properties and structural deformation of functional conjugated polymers are required. In particular, polythiophene has received much attention as a typical hole transfer material in electronic devices. However, the widely accepted polythiophenes are brittle because of the rigid chemical structure of thiophene rings. We have reported on the synthesis and flexible properties of polythiophene with disiloxane groups in side chains, and it was revealed that the polythiophene exhibited greater than 200% elongation at break at room temperature. In this study, we investigated the deformation process of polythiophene through in situ measurements under stretching using X-ray diffraction of synchrotron radiation and polarized infrared spectroscopy. In the X-ray diffraction measurements, orientation of the crystallites occurred after yielding, while the relative intensities of the polarized infrared absorption bands gradually increased during stretching. As seen from these results, during the initial deformation, the polythiophene chains in the amorphous region were aligned, and then, the whole bulk of the polythiophene, including crystallites and amorphous regions, were oriented after yielding. We succeeded in tracing the structural deformation of polythiophene during stretching.

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Acknowledgements

The synchrotron radiation experiments were performed at the BL03XU beamline of SPring‐8 with the approval of the Japan Synchrotron Radiation Research Institute (JASRI) (Proposal Nos 2017A7209, 2017B7261, 2018A7211, 2018B7261, 2019A7209, and 2019B7259)

Funding

This work was partially supported by a Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research on Innovative Areas, “New Polymeric Materials Based on Element-Blocks (No. 2401)” (MEXT/JSPS KAKENHI Grant Number JP 24102009), from The Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology, Japan.

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  1. Department of Chemical Science and Engineering, Graduate School of Engineering, Kobe University, Rokko, Nada, Kobe, 657-8501, Japan

    Jian Shen, Masaki Kashimoto, Takuya Matsumoto, Atsunori Mori & Takashi Nishino

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  1. Jian Shen
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Correspondence to Takashi Nishino.

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Shen, J., Kashimoto, M., Matsumoto, T. et al. Structural deformation of elastic polythiophene with disiloxane moieties under stretching. Polym J 52, 1273–1278 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41428-020-0385-y

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