| Abstract | We report on investigation, by correlated polarized excitation fluorescence microscopy (PEFM) and atomic force microscopy (AFM) imaging, of the conformational order of regiorandom poly(3-hexyl-thiophene) (rra-P3HT) aggregated on two boron nitride nanotube (BNNT) materials (BNNT-2 and BNNT-3) processed by different purification methods. rra-P3HT photoluminescence excited by linearly polarized light shows polarization direction-dependent intensity with a modulation depth, M, generally >0.5 for rra-P3HT on nanotubes and <0.5 for rra-P3HT on nontubular impurities. PEFM-measured modulation depth value distributions can be decomposed into two components, one corresponding to ordered rra-P3HT on nanotubes and the other to disordered rra-P3HT on impurities. The nanotube component peaks at M = 0.64 and 0.70 and comprises 60% and 78% of the normalized distribution for rra-P3HT on BNNT-2 and BNNT-3, respectively, indicating higher quality and higher fraction of nanotubes in the latter material. The method can be integrated in a material development platform to monitor production and purification progress. |
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