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The present thesis is concerned with the impact of alkali metal-doping on the electronic structure of semiconducting organic thin films. The organic molecular systems which have been studied are the polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons picene, pentacene, and coronene. Motivated by reports about exceptional behavior like superconductivity and electronic correlations of their alkali metal-doped compounds, high quality films fabricated from the above named molecules have been studied. The electronic structure of the pristine materials and their doped compounds has been investigated using photoelectron spectroscopy. Core level and valence band studies of undoped films yield excellent photoemission spectra agreeing with or even outperforming previously reported data from the literature. Alkali metal-doping manifests itself in a uniform manner in the electronic structure for all probed samples: Opposed to reports from the literature about metallicity and even superconductivity in alkali metal-doped picene, pentacene, and coronene, all films exhibit insulating nature with an energy gap of the order of one electron-volt. Remarkably, this is independent of the doping concentration and the type of dopant, i.e., potassium, cesium, or sodium. Based on the interplay between narrow bandwidths in organic semiconductors and sufficiently high on-molecule Coulomb repulsion, the non-metallicity is attributed to the strong influence of electronic correlations leading to the formation of a Mott insulator. In the case of picene, this is consolidated by calculations using a combination of density functional theory and dynamical mean-field theory. Beyond the extensive considerations regarding electronic correlations, further intriguing aspects have been observed. The deposition of thin picene films leads to the formation of a non-equilibrium situation between substrate and film surface. Here, the establishment of a homogeneous chemical potential is hampered due to the only weak van der Waals-interactions between the molecular layers in the films. Consequently, spectral weight is measurable above the reference chemical potential in photoemission. Furthermore, it has been found that the acceptance of additional electrons in pentacene is limited. While picene and coronene are able to host up to three extra electrons, in pentacene the limit is already reached for one electron. Finally, further extrinsic effects, coming along with alkali metal-doping, have been scrutinized. The oxidation of potassium atoms induced by the reaction with molecular oxygen in the residual gas of the ultra-high vacuum system turned out to significantly influence the electronic structure of alkali metal-doped picene and coronene. Moreover, also the applied X-ray and UV irradiation caused a certain impact on the photoemission spectra. Surprisingly, both effects did not play a role in the studies of potassium-doped pentacene.
In the presented thesis, the various excited states encountered in conjugated organic semiconductors are investigated with respect to their utilization in organic thin-film solar cells. Most of these states are spin-baring and can therefore be addressed by means of magnetic resonance spectroscopy. The primary singlet excitation (spin 0), as well as positive and negative polaronic charge carriers (spin 1/2) are discussed. Additionally, triplet excitons (spin 1) and charge transfer complexes are examined, focussing on their differing spin-spin interaction strength. For the investigation of these spin-baring states especially methods of electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) are best suited. Therefore according experimental methods were implemented in the course of this work to study conjugated polymers, fullerenes and their blends with continuous wave as well as time-resolved EPR and optically detected magnetic resonance.
In summary, it can be stated that the herein studied set of acceptor-substituted squaraine dyes can be seen as potent candidates for OTFTs. Furthermore, their transistor performance can be easily tuned to obtain hole mobilities up to 0.45 cm2/Vs from solution and 1.3 cm2/Vs from sublimation by choosing adequate deposition techniques. In the end, a probable structural model derived from studies of the thin-film morphology by methods such as optical spectroscopy, AFM and X-ray even facilitated the clarification of the observed charge transport behavior.
In this work, the trap states in the conjugated polymer P3HT, often used as electron donor in organic bulk heterojunction solar cells, three commonly used fullerene based electron acceptors and P3HT:PC61BM blends were investigated. Furthermore, the trap states in the blend were compared with these of the pure materials. Concerning the lifetime of organic solar cells the influence of oxygen on P3HT and P3HT:PC61BM blends was studied. The experimental techniques used to investigate the trap states in the organic semiconductors were (fractional) thermally stimulated current (TSC) and current based deep level transient spectroscopy (Q-DLTS). Fractional TSC measurements on P3HT diodes revealed a quasi-continuous trap distribution. The distribution suggested two different traps in P3HT with approximately Gaussian energy distributions and maxima at about 50 meV and 105 meV. Thereby, the former was attributed to the tail states within the regular Gaussian density of states due to the low activation energy. The latter, deeper traps, however, exhibited a strong dependence on oxygen. Exposure of the P3HT diodes to oxygen, ambient air and synthetic (dry) air all revealed an increase of the deeper traps density with exposure time in the same manner. While the lower limit of the trap density in non aged P3HT samples was in the range of (1.0 − 1.2)×10^22 m^−3, it was more than doubled after an exposure of 50 h to air. An increase of the trap density with oxygen exposure time was also seen in the Q-DLTS measurements accompanied with an increase of the temperature dependence of the emission rates, indicating an enhanced formation of deeper traps. Due to the raise in density of the deeper traps, the charge carrier mobility in P3HT significantly decreased, as revealed by photo-CELIV measurements, resulting in a loss in mobility of about two orders of magnitude after 100 h exposure to synthetic air. The increased trap density was attributed to p-doping of P3HT by the transfer of an electron to adsorbed oxygen. This effect was partially reversible by applying vacuum to the sample for several hours or, more significantly, by a thermal treatment of the devices in nitrogen atmosphere. The trap states in the methanofullerenes PC61BM, bisPC61BM and PC71BM were investigated by TSC measurements. PC61BM yielded a broad quasi-continuous trap distribution with the maximum of the distribution at about 75 meV. The comparison of the TSC spectra of the three methanofullerenes exhibited significant differences in the trap states with higher activation energies of the most prominent traps in bisPC61BM and PC71BM compared to PC61BM. This probably originates from the different isomers bisPC61BM and PC71BM consist of. Each of the isomers yields different LUMO energies, where the lower ones can act as traps. The lower limit of the trap density of all of the three investigated fullerene derivatives exhibited values in the order of 10^22 m^−3, with the highest for bisPC61BM and the lowest for PC61BM. By applying fractional TSC measurements on P3HT:PC61BM solar cells, it was shown that the trap distribution in the blend is a superposition of the traps in pure P3HT and PC61BM and additional deeper traps in the range of about 250 meV to 400 meV. The origin of these additional traps, which can not be related to the pure materials, was attributed to a higher disorder in the blend and P3HT/PC61BM interfaces. This conclusion was supported by standard TSC and Q-DLTS measurements performed on pristine and annealed P3HT:PC61BM blends, exhibiting a higher ratio of the deep traps in the pristine samples. The lower limit of the trap density of the investigated annealed solar cells was in the range of (6−8)×10^22 m^−3, which was considerably higher than in the pure materials. The influence of oxygen on P3HT:PC61BM solar cells was investigated by exposure of the devices to synthetic air under specific conditions. Exposure of the solar cells to oxygen in the dark resulted in a strong decrease in the power conversion efficiency of 60 % within 120 h, which was only caused by a loss in short-circuit current. Simultaneous illumination of the solar cells during oxygen exposure strongly accelerated the degradation, resulting in an efficiency loss of 30 % within only 3 h. Thereby, short-circuit current, open-circuit voltage and fill factor all decreased in the same manner. TSC measurements revealed an increase of the density of deeper traps for both degradation conditions, which resulted in a decrease of the mobility, as investigated by CELIV measurements. However, these effects were less pronounced than in pure P3HT. Furthermore, an increase of the equilibrium charge carrier density with degradation time was observed, which was attributed to oxygen doping of P3HT. With the aid of macroscopic simulations, it was shown that the doping of the solar cells is the origin of the loss in short-circuit current for both degradation conditions.
The thesis investigates the electrical transport properties of different π-conjugated organic semiconductors applied as active semiconducting material in organic field-effect transistor (OFET) devices. Theses organic materials are αω-dihexylquaterthiophene (DH4T), the tetrathiafulvalene (TTF) derivatives dibenzene-tetrathiafulvalene (DB-TTF) and dithiophene-tetrathiafulvalene (DT-TTF), and polytriarylamine (PTAA). The latter material is an amorphous polymer, the three others are small molecule oligomer materials. Different deposition methods were applied and compared. The investigations in the thesis treat the pure characterisation of the above materials with their different properties in OFET devices. Furthermore, the aim was to observe and analyse general rules and effects in OFETs depending on the structure, previous history, and the device scaling. Therefore, different tools and special analysing methods were developed and applied. These are a standard characterisation method for the classification of the used organic semiconductor, temperature dependent electrical characterisation investigating the electrical transport properties, the newly developed in situ measurement method of OFET devices, the downscaling of the OFET devices of channel length below 100 nm, and the lithographical structuring of a PTAA film.
The approach of using the combination of Ultraviolet (UPS) and Inverse Photoemission (IPS) to determine the transport levels in thin films of organic semiconductors is the scope of this work. For this matter all influences on the peak position and width in Photoelectron Spectroscopy are discussed with a special focus on organic semiconductors. Many of these influences are shown with experimental results of the investigation of diindenoperylene on Ag(111). These findings are applied to inorganic semiconductors silicon in order to establish the use of UPS and IPS on a well-understood system. Finally, the method is used to determine the transport level of several organic semiconductors (PTCDA, Alq3, CuPc, DIP, PBI-H4) and the corresponding exciton binding energies are calculated by comparison to optical absorption data.
This thesis deals with the synthesis of improved organic semiconductors, the detailed investigation of the molecular properties and the solid state arrangements revealed by single crystal X-ray diffraction and finally the development of structureperformance dependencies by measuring of the charge carrier mobilities of the derivatives in thin film transistors. The two main-goals of this thesis were achieved. Well soluble acene derivatives for spin-coated TFTs were obtained, showing charge carrier mobilities in the range of polymer p-type materials. Novel core-fluorinated perylene bisimide dyes were synthesized particularly and the use of electron deficient substituents lead to PBIs with outstanding air-stable mobilities in thin film transistors prepared by vacuum deposition techniques. The relationship between performance, air stability and solid state packing was elucidated in detail by single crystal X-ray diffraction analysis.