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Abstract

The properties of polyp-phenylene vinylene) (PPV) films depend on the degree of orientational order present in the films. Recently, Dermaut et al. reported a novel cold-stretching technique (Macromolecules 33, 5634-5637 (2000)) in which chain alignment can be introduced into PPV precursor films by uniaxially stretching them prior to the thermal elimination reaction that forms PPV. The two-dimensional direction exchange with correlation for orientation-distribution evaluation and reconstruction (DECODER) C-13 NMR technique was applied to both unstretched PPV films and PPV films that were uniaxially cold stretched to a draw ratio lambda = l/l(0) = 5. The unstretched films were found to be moderately ordered, comprised of a component present at 80% with a Gaussian distribution of 60degrees fwhm, while the remaining 20% is isotropically distributed. A distribution of 9 3 fwhm was measured by NMR in good agreement with IR dichroism measurements for the uniaxially cold-stretched films, establishing that a high degree of orientational order can be introduced by cold stretching PPV films. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science (USA).