Abstract
The authors present the results of a study of the optical properties of poly(phenylenevinylene), PPV, prepared by the sulfonium polyelectrolyte precursor. They investigate the conditions for the transformation reaction from precursor to PPV using optical and IR absorption. They investigate also the effects of oxidative doping. In situ electrochemical doping shows the appearance of new absorption features at 0.9 and 2.3 eV which correlate with pi - pi * interband bleaching at 3.0 eV and which may be assigned to valence band to bipolaron level transitions. Chemical doping with iodine and with AsF sub(5) introduces new infrared absorption features at 1151, 1286, 1317, 1420 and 1506 cm super(-1).