Determination of diffusion coefficient in disordered organic semiconductors

Abstract

Charge carrier transport in organic semiconductors is dominated by positional and energetic disorder in Gaussian density of states (GDOS) and is characterized by hopping through localized states. Due to the immobilization of charge carriers in these localized states, significant non-uniform carrier distribution exists, resulting diffusive transport. A simple, nevertheless powerful technique to determine diffusion coefficient D in disordered organic semiconductors has been presented. Diffusion coefficients of charge carriers in two technologically important organic molecular semiconductors, Pentacene and copper phthalocyanine (CuPc) have been measured from current-voltage (J-V) characteristics of Al/Pentacene/Au and Al/CuPc/Au based Schottky diodes. Ideality factor g and carrier mobility μ have been calculated from the exponential and space charge limited region respectively of J-V characteristics. Classical Einstein relation is not valid in organic semiconductors due to energetic disorders in DOS. Using generalized Einstein relation, diffusion coefficients have been obtained to be 1.31×10−6 and 1.73×10−7 cm2/s for Pentacene and CuPc respectively.