Influence of Acrylic Polymers Stereoregularity on Interface Interactions in Model Thin Film Systems

The origin and formation of the dipole moment at the interface of metal electrode and thin organic film is crucial for the fabrication of high-performance organic electronic devices. In this work, model polymer multilayer systems are studied in which interfaces are modified heterogeneously with thiol-based self-assembled monolayers (SAM). Due to the presence of polar terminal group (-COOH) in SAM and polar pendant groups (-COOH, -C(O)OCH3) within studied polymers, it is pointed out that the resultant interface energetics differ from the expected ones as one would expect from the chemical character of the self-assembled molecules used to tune junction properties. This is discussed in terms of inter-association and depolarization effects between polymer and thiol modified substrate. The presented model systems may serve as an interaction reference for SAMs and semiconducting polymers containing similar moieties, utilized for the fabrication of organic electronic devices.