Abstract

Epitaxial growth of polymers has been widely used for the orientation of « classical » polymers e.g. polyolefins, opening the route to advanced structural investigations using Transmission Electron Microscopy (TEM) (1). More recently, epitaxy has been used to investigate the structure and the crystallization of regioregular poly(3-alkylthiophene)’s (P3AT) (2-4). In particular, the dependence of the semi-crystalline structure on the macromolecular parameters have been highlighted (3,4). The use of advanced electron diffraction analysis on highly oriented epitaxied films opened the route to a first structural model of P3HT (5). The semi-crystalline structure of P3HT was used as a scaffold to grow highly oriented and nanostructured thin films of hybrid materials comprising various inorganic nanoparticles (FePt, CdSe, Au)(6). Epitaxy has been further used to grow highly oriented and nanostructured P3AT fibers with a so-called shish-kebab morphology (7).

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