Model of the influence of energetic disorder on inter‐chain charge carrier mobility in poly[2‐methoxy‐5‐(2′‐ethylhexyloxy)‐p‐phenylene vinylene

Abstract

AbstractThe theoretical model of the inter‐chain charge carrier mobility in poly[2‐methoxy‐5‐(2′‐ethylhexyloxy)‐p‐phenylene vinylene] (MEH–PPV) doped with polar additive is put forward. The polymer chain states of a charge carrier were calculated by means of diagonalization of a tight‐binding Hamiltonian, which includes disorder in both the local energies and transfer integrals. Consequently, the inter‐chain charge carrier transport is taking place on a spatially and energetically disordered medium. Because it is believed that the additive does not significantly influence the polymer supramolecular structure, the polymer conformations were simplified as much as possible. On the other hand, the energetic disorder is rigorously described. The transfer rates between the polymer chains were determined using the quasi‐classical Marcus theory. The model considered the following steps of the charge carrier transport: the charge carrier hops to a given polymer chain. Then, the charge carrier thermalizes to the Boltzmann distribution over all its possible states on this chain. After that, the charge carrier hops to any possible state on one of the four nearest neighboring chains. The results showed that the inter‐chain charge carrier mobility is very strongly dependent on the degree of the energetic disorder. If the energetic disorder is doubled from 0.09 to 0.18 eV, the mobility decreases by two or three orders of magnitude. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.