Energy Migration in Resist Polymers

The thought then was that in these systems the exciton traveled along the phenyl groups in the side chains of the polymer in a process termed down-chain migration. This view was later confirmed by Fox et al. and David et al.,  

Reiser, Photoreactive Polymers The Science and Technology of Resists, p. 75, John Wiley Sons, Hoboken, NJ (1989). 

Terenin and V. Ermolaev, Sensitized phosphorescence in organic solutions at low temperature. Energy transfer between triplet states, Trans. Faraday Soc. 52, 1042 (1956) V.L. Ermolaev, Energy transfer in organic systems involving the triplet state III. Rigid solutions and crystals, Sov. Phys. Usp. (Engl. Transl.) 80, 333 (1963). 

In contrast, when 1% poly( 1-vinylnaphthalene) is blended with 99% polystyrene, the result is mainly polystyrene phosphorescence. These results lend themselves to the conclusion that energy migration must occur intramolecularly via the mani- 

Furthermore, interrupting the sequence of naphthalene units, for example, by copolymerization with methyl methacrylate, results in dimunition of the delayed fluorescence, which is observed only as long as significant blocks of naphthyl groups still remain. It is for similar reasons that delayed fluorescence, for example, in poly(2-vinylnaphthalene), is dependent on molecular weight, that is, on chain length.  

---