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Recent Publications
Anmol Arya, Solomon L. Joseph, Francois Vonau, Jean-Luc Bubendorff, Silvia Siegenführ, Laurent Simon, Günter Reiter. J. Phys. Chem. C, published online
In the course of electrospraying in a vacuum, polymers acquire electric charges, which are distributed along their backbone. Here, we demonstrate that these charges have a strong impact on the molecular ordering and spectroscopic properties of conjugated polymers when deposited on substrates with an insulating oxide layer. To this end, we electrosprayed varying amounts of poly(3-hexylthiophene) (P3HT) onto silicon substrates with oxide layers of different thickness. The resulting morphologies were explored by atomic force microscopy. The corresponding spectroscopic properties, including their changes in time upon illumination, were derived from photoluminescence (PL) measurements. On insulating substrates, charges were retained on the polymer chains, causing long-range electrostatic repulsion and the formation of largely separated droplet-like objects containing multiple chains. These objects exhibited significant PL intensities for photons with a wavelength (λ) less than ca. 600 nm, suggesting the lack of π–π stacking interactions between P3HT chains. (more...)
Reversible Metamorphosis of a Conjugated Polymer Induced by Photoexcitation
Solomon Joseph, Anmol Arya, Günter Reiter. Advanced Photonics Research 7 (2026) e202500311
Optoelectronic properties of materials are frequently examined through spectroscopic tools based on the absorption and emission of (visible) photons. Typically, one assumes that these transient characterization processes do not cause observable change of these properties because of the low power of the employed light sources. However, for flexible conjugated polymers in a medium of low viscosity, it is decidedly unclear whether photoexcitation of electrons on the backbone of a long polymer chain has an influence on macromolecular conformations and the corresponding intermolecular interactions. Here, we provide clear experimental evidence that continuous absorption of photons progressively causes persistent changes in the spectroscopic properties of conjugated polymers, accompanied by microscopically observable changes in their spatial distribution within a low-viscosity matrix. By contrast, all these changes were completely absent in nonilluminated parts of the same sample.(more...)
Temperature dependence of crystal – melt coexistence for supported polyethylene filaments
Da Huang, Thorsten Hugel, Bizan N. Balzer, Günter Reiter. Nature Communications 16 (2025) 11127
The broken symmetry of molecular interactions at interfaces is causing that crystals are often covered by a thin liquid layer of their own melt. Such crystal–melt coexistence can be related to phenomena of surface premelting, secondary nucleation and melting point depression, particularly important for small systems. Here, we employed intermittent-contact mode atomic force microscopy imaging on nanoscopic semi-cylindrical filaments of polyethylene on a substrate to observe that these filaments contained a crystalline core bounded by molten regions of rather uniform width, W_soft= (9 ± 2) nm at room temperature, which increased reversibly with temperature T. Filaments smaller than ca. 2∙W_soft (T) were completely molten. The values of W_soft (T) compared favorably with theoretically predicted characteristic length scales in the context of nucleation, surface premelting and the melting point depression of finite size crystals. Altogether, we show that these three phenomena are related and dominated by the intermolecular forces acting at crystal surfaces.(more...)
List of Publications
- Thin Film Morphology in Triblock Terpolymers with One and Two Crystallizable Blocks
- Adriana Boschetti-de-Fierro, Lea Spindler, Günter Reiter, Dania Olmos, Sergei Magonov, Volker Abetz. Macromolecules 40, 5487-5496 (2007)
- Stable dispersions of highly anisotropic nanoparticles formed by cocrystallization of enantiomeric diblock copolymers
- D. Portinha, F. Boue, L. Bouteiller, G. Carrot, C. Chassenieux, S. Pensec, G. Reiter. Macromolecules 40, 4037- 4042 (2007)
- Cooperative Rearrangements Leading to Long Range Order in Monolayers of Supramolecular Polymers
- F. Vonau, D. Aubel, L. Bouteiller, G. Reiter, L. Simon. Phys. Rev. Lett. 99, 086103 (2007)
- Relaxation of Residual Stress and Reentanglement of Polymers in Spin-Coated Films
- Pascal Damman, Sylvain Gabriele, Séverine Coppée, Sylvain Desprez, Didier Villers, Thomas Vilmin, Elie Raphaël, Moustafa Hamieh, Samer Al Akhrass, Günter Reiter. Phys. Rev. Lett. 99, 036101 (2007)
- Switching layer stability in a polymer bilayer by thickness variation
- J. P. de Silva, M. Geoghegan, A. M. Higgins, G. Krausch, M.-O. David, G. Reiter. Phys. Rev. Lett. 98, 267802 (2007)
- Avantages de la réflectometrie des neutrons pour l’étude des polymères en couches minces
- Günter Reiter, Mark Geoghegan. Collection SFN 8, 103-113 (2007)
- Morphologies of Polymer Crystals in Thin Films
- Günter Reiter, Ioan Botiz, Laetitia Graveleau, Nikolay Grozev, Krystyna Albrecht, Ahmed Mourran, Martin Möller. In "Progress in Understanding Polymer Crystallization". Eds. Günter Reiter and Gert Strobl, Lect. Notes Phys. 714, 179-200 (2007)
- Influence of Substrate Properties on the Dewetting Dynamics of Viscoelastic Polymer Films
- Moustafa Hamieh, Samer Al Akhrass, Tayssir Hamieh, Pascal Damman, Sylvain Gabriele, Thomas Vilmin, Elie Raphaël, Günter Reiter. J. Adhes. 83, 367-381 (2007)
- The Physics of Polymers, Concepts for Understanding Their Structures and Behavior.
- Gert Strobl. Third Revised and Expanded Edition, Springer 2007, ISBN 978-3-540-25278-8
- Growth kinetics of polymer crystals in bulk
- G. Strobl and T. Y. Cho. Eur. Phys. J. E 23, 55 (2007)
- A law controlling polymer recrystallization showing up in experiments on s-polypropylene
- Barbara Heck, Silvia Siegenführ, Gert Strobl and Ralf Thomann. Polymer, 48, 1352-1359 (2007)
- Stabilization, Reformation and Melting of Poly(L-Lactide) Crystallites
- Tai-Yon Cho, Barbara Heck, Gert Strobl. Chinese J. Polym. Sci. 25, 83 (2007)
- The role of Frank elasticity in cholesteric elastomers
- Werner Stille, Jürgen Schmidtke. Eur. Phys. J. E 22, 117 (2007)
- Investigation of polymer crystallization kinetics with time dependent light attenuation measurements
- J. Fritsch, W. Stille, G. Strobl. Colloid Polym. Sci. 284, 620 (2006)
- Viscoelastic dewetting of constrained polymer thin films
- Pascal Damman, Séverine Sclavons, Sylvain Gabriele, Sylvain Desprez, Günter Reiter, Moustafa Hamieh, Samer Al Akhrass, Thomas Vilmin, Elie Raphaël. Journal of Polymer Science Part B: Polymer Physics 44, 3022-3030 (2006)
- Lamellar Crystal Orientations Biased by Crystallization Kinetics in Polymer Thin Films
- Yu Ma, Wenbing Hu, Günter Reiter. Macromolecules 39, 5159-5164 (2006)
- Disentanglement Time of Polymers Determines the Onset of Rim Instabilities in Dewetting
- Sylvain Gabriele, Séverine Sclavons, Günter Reiter, Pascal Damman. Phys. Rev. Lett. 96, 156105 (2006)
- The Formation of Ordered Polymer Structures at Interfaces
- J.-U. Sommer and G. Reiter Advances in Polymer Science, 200, 1-36 (2006)
- Elastomer polymer brushes on flat surface by bimolecular surface-initiated nitroxide mediated polymerization
- Julien Parvole, Jean-Pierre Montfort, Günter Reiter, Oleg Borisov, Laurent Billon. Polymer, 47, 972-981 (2006)
- The role of nonlinear friction in the dewetting of thin polymer films
- T. Vilmin, E. Raphaël, P. Damman, S. Sclavons, S. Gabriele, M. Hamieh, G. Reiter. Europhys. Lett. 73, 906 - 912 (2006)