Spectrophotometer is an instrument which measures and compares the

incident, reflected and transmitted light of a sample. Double monochromator

U-3900H spectrophotometer has been used for the UV-visible absorption
spectrosopic studies of the polymers. This spectrophotometer contains two light
sources deuterium (D2) lamp and tungsten halogen lamp for UV and visible
light incidence respectively. The light sources are switched automatically
depending upon the wavelengths of measurements. The light emitted from the
light sources is projected onto the monochromator. The monochromator is
composed of entrance slit, diffraction grating, reflecting mirrors, and exit slit.
The output of the monochromator is allowed to pass through a stray light
cutting filter and then the output of the filter is splitted into two parts by the
beam chopper. One of the two parts serves as reference beam whereas second
part serves as the sample beam. These beams pass through their respective
cells/samples and strike the photomultiplier. After the reference and sample
beams are picked up by the photomultiplier and the signals are converted into
voltage signal, which is then fed into the analog to digital (A/D) converter and
finally read by the central processing unit (CPU) of the computer and are
displayed in the form of absorbance vs wavelength graph on the monitor
screen. The absorption graph shows which particular wavelength is absorbed
and which is transmitted by the sample.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS

U-V Visible spectroscopy:
The range of wavelength kept was 300nm to 800nm.Maximum absorption was
seen at a wavelength of 512.9nm from the graph.

absorption
11

absorbance

10

6
300

400

500

600

700

800

wavelength(nm)

1.1 Graph between absorbance and wavelength

Energy was calculated by using the formula:

E=h*c/l
Where:
h=planks constant
c=velocity of light
l=wavelength of light
and alpha=absorbance/thickness with thickness measured to be 150nm.

y
5.00E+013

4.00E+013

A^2

3.00E+013

2.00E+013

1.00E+013

0.00E+000

1.5

2.0

2.5

3.0

3.5

4.0

4.5

energy

1.2.graph A^2 and energy

From the absorption spectra the optical band gaps of the polymers can also be
calculated. Tauc presented a relation which relates the absorbance of the
material to the band gap as
Ah h E g

(3.1)

Here n is 1/2 for direct band gap material and 2 for indirect band gap
materials, A is the absorbance, Eg is the band gap corresponding to a
particular absorption occurring in the film and h is the photon energy. The
values of the direct optical band gap for the polymer was obtained from
extrapolation of straight-line portion of A2 versus h plot, to A = 0 .From graph
1.2 the energy band gap was found to be 1.78 eV.

N.B: pathlength of cuvettes used is 10 mm.