CeNS Colloquium

Prof. Thomas Thurn-Albrecht, Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg

Different from the case of small molecules, crystallization of polymers is always incomplete and leads to the formation of nanoscopically heterogeneous materials with a semicrystalline morphology. Many polymers in practical use are in fact semicrystalline and this fact determines their properties to a large extent. After a general introduction to polymer crystallization and semicrystalline polymers I will describe in my talk selected topics of our research, namely AMF-based investigations about crystallization at the interface to a solid, and structural investigations of the common polymeric semiconductor Poly(3-hexylthiophene), mainly based on X-ray scattering experiments.

References:

1. A.-K. Löhmann, T. Henze, and T. Thurn-Albrecht, Direct observation of prefreezing at the interface melt-solid in polymer crystallization, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, 111, 17368- 17372 (2014)

2. J. Balko; R. Lohwasser; M. Sommer; M. Thelakkat; T. Thurn-Albrecht, Determination of the Crystallinity of Semicrystalline Poly(3-hexylthiophene) by Means of Wide-Angle X-ray Scattering, Macromolecules 46, 9642−9651 (2013)

3. C. Singh; G. Gupta; R. Lohwasser; S. Engmann; J. Balko; M. Thelakkat; T. Thurn-Albrecht; H. Hoppe, Correlation of Charge Transport with Structural Order in Highly Ordered Melt-Crystallized Poly(3-hexylthiophene) Thin Films. Journal of Polymer Science, Part B: Polymer Physics 51, 943-951 (2013)