Contact injection into polymer light-emitting diodes

Abstract

The variation of current I with voltage V for poly(phenylene vinylene) and other polymer light-emitting diodes has been attributed to carriers tunneling into broad conduction and valence bands. In actuality the electrons and holes tunnel into polaron levels and transport is by hopping among these levels. We show that for small injection the I–V characteristic is determined mainly by the image force, for large injection by space charge effects, but in both cases the strong variation of mobility with field due to disorder plays an important role.