Improvement in optical absorption and emission characteristics of polymethyl methacrylate in solution cast polymethyl methacrylate/polyvinyl carbazole polyblends

Abstract

Polymer blends have got considerable attention for their potential optoelectronic and photonic applications due to several advantages such as easy processing, low cost, flexibility, and good mechanical properties. This work reports the structure and optical properties of solution cast binary blends of poly (methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) and poly (vinyl carbazole) (PVK). Here, the position and/or intensity of characteristic FTIR peaks reveal the changes of the structure of PMMA on PVK content while the surface morphology changes from highly smooth for pure PMMA to flaky structured (PVK 5%) and then to agglomerated morphologies for these blends. A red shift in optical absorption edge and decrease in optical transmission with PVK content in PMMA based blends. The emission spectra exhibit intensity escalation by 340 times with respect to PMMA for PVK-15 blends and then decreases with further addition of PVK in these blends. These results are very important for the advent of new optoelectronic functionalities for these polymer blends.