Strategies towards functionalised electronically conducting organic copolymers: Part 2. Copolymerisation

Here we discuss the application of X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy and abs orbance-reflectance FT-IR spectroscopy to establish and quantify reactivity relationships between a range of thiophene and pyrrole monomers. In partic ular we investigate the application of these techniques to the characterisa tion of conducting polymer materials grown potentiostatically from solution s containing a binary mixture of monomers. Our data have shown that XPS is especially effective in determining polymer composition and the linear corr elation between this and solution composition has enabled prescriptive synt hesis of copolymer materials from the different combinations of monomers de scribed here. This technique is much more convenient and more reliable than elemental analysis. In contrast we show that FT-IR studies, whilst providi ng a useful qualitative guide to the functional group content of the materi al, do not facilitate detailed quantitative analysis because of large intri nsic errors.