All-Polymer Photonic Microcavities Doped with Perylene Bisimide J-Aggregates

Abstract

Thanks to exciting chemical and optical features, perylene bisimide J-aggregates are ideal candidates to be employed for high-performance plastic photonic devices. However, they generally tend to form π–π stacked H-aggregates that are unsuitable for implementation in polymer resonant cavities. In this work, the efficient compatibilization of a tailored perylene bisimide forming robust J-aggregated supramolecular polymers into amorphous polypropylene is introduced. The new nanocomposite is then implemented into an all-polymer planar microcavity, which provides strong and directional spectral redistribution of the J-aggregate photoluminescence, due to a strong modification of the photonic states. A systematic analysis of the photoemitting processes, including photoluminescence decay and quantum yields, shows that the optical confinement in the polymeric microcavity does not introduce any additional nonradiative de-excitation pathways to those already found in the J-aggregate nanocomposite film and pave the way to PBI-based high-performance plastic photonic devices.