Does interchain stacking morphology contribute to the singlet–triplet interconversion dynamics in polymer heterojunctions?

Abstract

Time-dependent density functional theory (TD-DFT) is used to examine the effect of stacking in a model semiconducting polymer hetrojunction system consisting of two co-facially stacked oligomers. We find that the excited electronic states are highly sensitive to the alignment of the monomer units of the two chains. In the system we examined, the exchange energy is nearly identical to both the and band off-set at the heterojunction and to the exciton binding energy. Our results indicate that the triplet excitonic states are nearly degenerate with the singlet exciplex states opening the possibility for the interconversion of singlet and triplet electronic states at the heterojunction interface via spin–orbit coupling localized on the heteroatoms. Using Russell–Saunders theory, we estimate this interconversion rate to be approximately 700–800 ps, roughly a 5–10-fold increase compared to isolated organic polymer chains.