Microwave Hall effect measurements on biological and organic semiconductors

Abstract

Microwave Hall effect measurements have been performed by improved 10 GHz bimodal cavity resonators with hybrid end walls used to avoid the background signal that obscures the measurements on low mobility materials. Hall mobility results on copper phthalocyanines CuPc and other organic semiconductors, in the range of 8 cm2/V s to 60 cm2/V s, provide evidence of acoustic phonon scattering as the dominant conduction mechanism. Presently, the microwave Hall effect seems to represent the only means available for quantitative measurements on biological substances like DNA and proteins, which yield mobility values lower than 10 cm2/V s, and are therefore consistent with conduction mechanism involving hopping of charge carriers between localized energy sites.