The impact of Interfacial Mixing on Forster Transfer at Conjugated Polymer Heterojunctions

Neutron reflectivity and photoluminescence measurements are reported on bilayers of polyfluorene-based conjugated polymers. By using a novel thermal processing procedure it is possible to control the width of the interface between poly(9,9-dioctylfluorene) (F8) and poly(9,9-dioctylfluorene-alt- benzothiadiazole) (F8BT), and measure the impact of interfacial roughness on the resonant energy transfer of excitons at the interface (Forster transfer). It is found that increasing the root mean square (rms) roughness of the F8/F8BT interface over the range of similar to 1 nm to similar to 5 nm leads to a greatly enhanced Forster transfer from F8 to F8BT molecules. By comparing photoluminescence measurements with simple calculations it is concluded that the level of enhancement of the F8BT peak at rough interfaces can only be adequately explained if mixing of F8 and F8BT at a molecular level dominates over the interfacial roughness due to thermally excited capillary waves.