Tracking Exciton Diffusion and Exciton Annihilation in Single Nanoparticles of Conjugated Polymers by Photon Correlation Spectroscopy

A fundamental question relating to the nature of light emission and absorption in organic semiconductors is the dimension of the domain within a bulk material responsible for the interaction of light and matter. How large can a nanoparticle become to retain the quantized nature of light emission? Excitons are only a few nanometers in size, but because they diffuse in space, they probe a much larger volume than the single molecule. When excitons meet, they may decay non-radiatively by singlet-singlet or singlet-triplet annihilation (SSA or STA). Fluorescence photon statistics reveal whether single photons are emitted (photon antibunching) or arrive in randomly spaced packets (photon bunching), offering direct insight into excitonic mobility. Single multichain nanoparticles of ladder-type poly(para-phenylene) (LPPP) are examined. The effect of SSA and STA is seen in the photon antibunching and bunching, respectively, which both decrease in fidelity as the size of the nanoparticle increases. Time resolving the photon correlation measurement yields microscopic annihilation rates for SSA and STA in agreement with values obtained from bulk LPPP films. Even though triplets in LPPP are known to be highly mobile, the results show that, on the timescale of the singlet exciton lifetime, triplet diffusion is not of significance in the STA process.

Automated summary

The interaction between light and matter in organic semiconductors is influenced by the dimension of the domain within the material. In this study, the effect of exciton mobility on photon antibunching and bunching was examined using ladder-type poly(para-phenylene) nanoparticles. The results show that triplet diffusion is not significant in the singlet-triplet annihilation process.