Abstract
UV/Vis spectroscopic investigation of aqueous solutions of regio-irregular poly(thiophen-3-ylacetic acid) (PTAA) with and without methyl-ester groups in the presence of sodium and lithium ions as counterions is presented. The samples were carefully purified and characterized with respect to molar mass and the amount of -COOH groups present.
We examined how the UV/Vis spectra of solution change with aging of PTAA solution, polymer concentration, addition of low molecular weight salt, temperature, and some other parameters. We show that results crucially depend on whether the spectra are taken for freshly prepared or mature solutions.
We demonstrate the validity of the Beer-Lambert law for PTANa, PTAA/Na, and PTAA/Li (aged solution), and violation of this law for PTANa/Me (fresh) solutions in water; the latter system is instead found to exhibit an isosbetic point at 402 nm. We prove that UV/Vis spectra of polythiophene derivatives in water depend on the "age" (time after dissolution) of the solution.
The inconsistencies among the spectroscopic data found in literature, as also the discrepancies with our own measurements on PTAA-based systems are discussed