10 - Advances in modeling the physics of disordered organic electronic devices

Abstract

Since the landmark discovery of semiconducting polymers, the development of organic electronic devices has constituted a major international research effort and has evolved into a well-established field of fundamental and applied research. Stemming from these efforts, organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs), organic photovoltaics, and organic field-effect transistors are the most heavily developed technologies, with OLEDs in particular achieving widespread commercial success in mobile and television displays. Throughout the many development phases of all these devices, simulation and modeling have played an important role in understanding the fundamental mechanisms governing energy and charge transport, as well as how these mechanisms eventually connect to the performance of real devices. Simulation and modeling techniques span a wide range of time and length scales and can have immense variations in complexity, depending on the problem being investigated. In this chapter, we present the latest organic semiconductor (OSC) device simulation and modeling techniques and highlight the major developments and types of problems that have been addressed using these techniques. We divide the discussion into two sections—one covering microscopic techniques (primarily kinetic Monte Carlo simulations) and another covering macroscopic techniques (primarily drift-diffusion simulations). In the end, we also provide an outlook for the future of OSC device simulation and modeling that highlights particularly interesting and impactful areas for further research.