Time-dependent energy transfer rates in a conjugated polymer guest-host system

Abstract

We have investigated the energy transfer dynamics in films of a conjugated polyindenofluorene host doped with covalently attached perylene guests. By performing time-resolved measurements of the host luminescence decay under site-selective excitation conditions, we have examined the influence of exciton migration within the host on the temporal evolution of the host-guest energy transfer. We find that highly mobile excitons created at the peak of the host's inhomogeneous density of states transfer to guests considerably faster than more localized excitons created in the low-energy tail, indicating a strong contribution of exciton migration to the overall energy transfer. These effects are significantly more pronounced at low temperature $(7\phantom{\rule{0.3em}{0ex}}\mathrm{K})$ than at ambient temperature, suggesting that for the latter, up-hill migration of excitons in the host and a broadening of their homogeneous linewidth may prevent truly site-selective excitation of localized excitons. In the asymptotic long-time limit, the observed dynamics are compatible with long-range single-step F\"orster energy transfer. However, at early times $(\ensuremath{\lesssim}10\phantom{\rule{0.3em}{0ex}}\mathrm{ps})$ after excitation, the behavior notably deviates from this description, suggesting that diffusion-assisted energy transfer is more important in this regime. The measured changes in excitation transfer rates with temperature and excitation energy correlate well with those observed for the dynamic energy shifts of the vibronic emission peaks from the undoped polymer. Our results therefore indicate that energy-transfer rates in polymeric guest-host systems are strongly time-dependent, owing to a contribution both from exciton relaxation through incoherent hopping within the host's density of states and direct F\"orster energy transfer.