Abstract
Non-volatile liquid organic semiconducting materials have received much attention as emerging functional materials for organic electronic and optoelectronic devices due to their remarkable advantages. However, charge injection and transport processes are significantly impeded at interfaces between electrodes and liquid organic semiconductors, resulting in overall lower performance compared to conventional solid-state electronic devices. Here we successfully demonstrate efficient charge injection into solvent-free liquid organic semiconductors via cracked metal structures with a large number of edges leading to local electric field enhancement. For this work, thin metal films on deformable polymer substrates were mechanically stretched to generate cracks on the metal surfaces in a controlled manner, and charge injection properties into a typical non-volatile liquid organic semiconducting material, (9-2-ethylhexyl)carbazole (EHCz), were investigated in low bias region (i.e., ohmic current region). It was found that the cracked structures significantly increased the current density at a fixed external bias voltage via the local electric field enhancement, which was strongly supported by field intensity calculation using COMSOL Multiphysics software. We anticipate that these results will significantly contribute to the development and further refinement of various organic electronic and optoelectronic devices based on non-volatile liquid organic semiconducting materials.
Highlights
Non-volatile liquid organic semiconducting materials have attracted a lot of interest as emerging functional materials for organic electronic and optoelectronic devices in recent years, because these fluidic materials present outstanding advantages such as tunable optoelectronic responses, degradation-free characteristics, solvent-free processability, and ultimate mechanical flexibility and uniformity [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8]
These results suggest great potential for the development and further refinement of various organic electronic and optoelectronic devices based on non-volatile liquid organic semiconducting materials
We demonstrate efficient charge injection into solvent-free liquid organic semiconductors via cracked metal structures with a large number of edges leading to local electric field enhancement
Summary
Non-volatile liquid organic semiconducting materials have attracted a lot of interest as emerging functional materials for organic electronic and optoelectronic devices in recent years, because these fluidic materials present outstanding advantages such as tunable optoelectronic responses, degradation-free characteristics, solvent-free processability, and ultimate mechanical flexibility and uniformity [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8]. The electric fields are spontaneously concentrated at the edges of the field plates (i.e., edge effect) [35,36,37,38], where the field intensities are locally increased, and the field plate structures (i.e., shapes of electrodes) play a decisive role in the spatial distributions of electric fields. This phenomenon is applicable to interface engineering for improving the charge injection characteristics of organic electronic devices
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
