Effect of thermal annealing on the microstructure of P3HT thin film investigated by RAIR spectroscopy

The influence of thermal annealing on the structural ordering and orientation rearrangement of as cast P3HT thin film (<100 nm) has been studied by reflection absorption infrared spectroscopy (RAIR). In order to erase the effect of temperature on the spectral intensity, two thermal procedures have been used to investigate the annealing-induced structural change of P3HT thin film. One is the continuous heating mode, in which the RIAR spectra were in situ collected during the heating process. The other is the stepwise heating mode, that is the isothermal annealing, and the spectra were ex situ collected at room temperature after the thermal treatment. It is found that thermal annealing can enhance the pi-pi interaction in P3HT crystal domain, whereas the improvement on the degree of crystallinity is not so obviously. Meanwhile, our results suggest that annealing-induced structural rearrangement on pi-pi stacking is irreversible, whereas the change on hexyl side chain packing is reversible. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.