Modeling of the transient mobility in disordered organic semiconductors with a Gaussian density of states

Abstract

The charge-carrier mobility in organic semiconductors is often studied using non-steady-state experiments. However, energetic disorder can severely hamper the analysis due to the occurrence of a strong time dependence of the mobility caused by carrier relaxation. The multiple-trapping model is known to provide an accurate description of this effect. However, the value of the conduction level energy and the hopping attempt rate, which enter the model as free parameters, are not a priori known for a given material. We show how for the case of a Gaussian density of states both parameters can be deduced from the parameter values used to describe the measured dc current-voltage characteristics within the framework of the extended Gaussian disorder model. The approach is validated using three-dimensional Monte Carlo modeling. In the analysis, the charge-density dependence of the time-dependent mobility is included. The model is shown to successfully predict the low-frequency differential capacitance of sandwich-type devices based on a polyfluorene copolymer.