A general relationship between disorder, aggregation and charge transport in conjugated polymers

Rodrigo Noriega; Jonathan Rivnay; Koen Vandewal; Felix P V Koch; Natalie Stingelin; Paul Smith; Michael F. Toney; Alberto Salleo

doi:10.1038/nmat3722

A general relationship between disorder, aggregation and charge transport in conjugated polymers

Rodrigo Noriega, Jonathan Rivnay, Koen Vandewal, Felix P V Koch, Natalie Stingelin, Paul Smith, Michael F. Toney, Alberto Salleo

Biomedical Engineering

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

1776 Scopus citations

Abstract

Conjugated polymer chains have many degrees of conformational freedom and interact weakly with each other, resulting in complex microstructures in the solid state. Understanding charge transport in such systems, which have amorphous and ordered phases exhibiting varying degrees of order, has proved difficult owing to the contribution of electronic processes at various length scales. The growing technological appeal of these semiconductors makes such fundamental knowledge extremely important for materials and process design. We propose a unified model of how charge carriers travel in conjugated polymer films. We show that in high-molecular-weight semiconducting polymers the limiting charge transport step is trapping caused by lattice disorder, and that short-range intermolecular aggregation is sufficient for efficient long-range charge transport. This generalization explains the seemingly contradicting high performance of recently reported, poorly ordered polymers and suggests molecular design strategies to further improve the performance of future generations of organic electronic materials.

Original language	English (US)
Pages (from-to)	1038-1044
Number of pages	7
Journal	Nature materials
Volume	12
Issue number	11
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1038/nmat3722
State	Published - Nov 2013

Funding

We thank G. Rumbles for his comments in the preparation of this manuscript. We gratefully thank A. Facchetti and Z. Chen (Polyera, Skokie, IL), and I. McCulloch and M. Heeney (Imperial College, London) for supplying materials (P[NDI2OD-T2], P3HT, and PBTTT). This work is supported by the Center for Advanced Molecular Photovoltaics Award No. KUS-C1-015-21 made by King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) (R.N., J.R., K.V., A.S.), and NSF (J.R., A.S.). N.S. acknowledges support by a European Research Council (ERC) Starting Independent Researcher Fellowship under the grant agreement No. 279587. Portions of this research were carried out at the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource, a national user facility operated by Stanford University on behalf of the US Department of Energy, Office of Basic Energy Sciences.

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Condensed Matter Physics
Mechanics of Materials
Mechanical Engineering
General Chemistry
General Materials Science

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10.1038/nmat3722

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title = "A general relationship between disorder, aggregation and charge transport in conjugated polymers",

abstract = "Conjugated polymer chains have many degrees of conformational freedom and interact weakly with each other, resulting in complex microstructures in the solid state. Understanding charge transport in such systems, which have amorphous and ordered phases exhibiting varying degrees of order, has proved difficult owing to the contribution of electronic processes at various length scales. The growing technological appeal of these semiconductors makes such fundamental knowledge extremely important for materials and process design. We propose a unified model of how charge carriers travel in conjugated polymer films. We show that in high-molecular-weight semiconducting polymers the limiting charge transport step is trapping caused by lattice disorder, and that short-range intermolecular aggregation is sufficient for efficient long-range charge transport. This generalization explains the seemingly contradicting high performance of recently reported, poorly ordered polymers and suggests molecular design strategies to further improve the performance of future generations of organic electronic materials.",

author = "Rodrigo Noriega and Jonathan Rivnay and Koen Vandewal and Koch, {Felix P V} and Natalie Stingelin and Paul Smith and Toney, {Michael F.} and Alberto Salleo",

note = "Funding Information: We thank G. Rumbles for his comments in the preparation of this manuscript. We gratefully thank A. Facchetti and Z. Chen (Polyera, Skokie, IL), and I. McCulloch and M. Heeney (Imperial College, London) for supplying materials (P[NDI2OD-T2], P3HT, and PBTTT). This work is supported by the Center for Advanced Molecular Photovoltaics Award No. KUS-C1-015-21 made by King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) (R.N., J.R., K.V., A.S.), and NSF (J.R., A.S.). N.S. acknowledges support by a European Research Council (ERC) Starting Independent Researcher Fellowship under the grant agreement No. 279587. Portions of this research were carried out at the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource, a national user facility operated by Stanford University on behalf of the US Department of Energy, Office of Basic Energy Sciences.",

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AU - Smith, Paul

AU - Toney, Michael F.

AU - Salleo, Alberto

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A general relationship between disorder, aggregation and charge transport in conjugated polymers

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