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Quantifying Charge Carrier Localization in PBTTT Using Thermoelectric and Spectroscopic Techniques
Shawn A Gregory1, Amalie Atassi1, James F Ponder2
1School of Materials Science and Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, Georgia 30332, United States.
Summary
Chemically doped polythiophenes achieve high conductivity due to ordered microdomains. The semilocalized transport (SLoT) model explains how doping affects charge transport in these organic semiconductors.
Area of Science:
- Organic electronics
- Materials science
- Solid-state physics
Background:
- Chemically doped polythiophenes like PBTTT are promising for organic electronics.
- Understanding their charge transport is complex due to material inhomogeneity.
Purpose of the Study:
- To quantify charge transport properties of PBTTT using the semilocalized transport (SLoT) model.
- To investigate the impact of iron(III) chloride (FeCl3) doping on PBTTT.
- To establish a benchmark for comparing polymer-dopant systems.
Main Methods:
- Application of the semilocalized transport (SLoT) model.
- Calculation of carrier density and Fermi energy level.
- Characterization using grazing incidence wide-angle X-ray scattering and spectroscopic ellipsometry.
Main Results:
- PBTTT achieves high electrical conductivity owing to a rapidly increasing reduced Fermi energy level.
- High local carrier densities within ordered microdomains contribute to this conductivity.
- The SLoT model successfully quantifies transport parameters across varying doping levels.
Conclusions:
- The study provides a quantitative understanding of charge transport in doped PBTTT.
- Ordered microdomains with high carrier densities are crucial for high conductivity.
- This work establishes a framework for evaluating different polymer-dopant systems.
