A microscopic and spectroscopic study of interactions between carbon nanotubes and a conjugated polymer

Production of stable polymer-nanotube composites depends on good wetting interaction between polymer and nanotube, which is polymer specific, and depends in particular on chain conformation. In this paper, we examine this interaction for a conjugated, semiconducting polymer by a range of microscopic and spectroscopic techniques, to gain a greater understanding of the binding. Several interesting effects are observed, including an order to the interaction between the polymer and nanotube, the tendency of defects in the nanotube structure to nucleate crystal growth, and substantial changes in the spectroscopic behavior of the polymer due to the effect of the nanotubes on polymer conformation. This is substantiated by computational modeling, which demonstrates that these conformational modifications are due to the interaction with the nanotubes.