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Efficient electrical doping of organic semiconductors relies on identifying appropriate molecular dopants that are capable of ionizing semiconductor molecules with a high yield, thereby creating mobile charges. We explore the suitability of two different material parameters to predict ion pair formation for different sets of semiconductor–dopant combinations: (i) redox-potentials measured by cyclic voltammetry in solution and (ii) ionization energy (IE)/electron affinity (EA) measured on thin films by ultraviolet/inverse photoelectron spectroscopy. Our study suggests, at least for molecular semiconductors and dopants, that redox-potentials are better suited to identify matching material pairs and their ion pair formation yield than IE/EA values. This is ascribed to the dependence of IE/EA values on molecular orientation and film structure on and above the meso-scale. In contrast, cyclic voltammetry measurements, although performed on solutions rather than on thin films, capture dopant–semiconductor energy levels on the molecular scale, which is more relevant for doping even in the case of solid thin films.
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Influence of dopant size and electron affinity on the electrical conductivity and thermoelectric properties of a series of conjugated polymers
Chemical doping is widely used to manipulate the electrical and thermoelectric properties of organic semiconductors, yet intelligent design of polymer–dopant systems remains elusive. It is challenging to predict the electrical and thermoelectric properties of doped organic semiconductors due to the large number of variables impacting these properties, including film morphology, dopant and polymer energetics, dopant size, and degree of polaron delocalization. Herein, a series of dopants with varying sizes and electron affinities (EAs) are combined with polymers of differing ionization energies (IEs) to investigate how the difference between polymer IE and dopant EA influences the doping efficiency and electrical conductivity, and how the dopant size influences the thermoelectric properties. Our experiments demonstrate that at low doping levels the doping efficiency strongly depends on the difference between the polymer IE and dopant EA; the effectiveness of doping on increasing electrical conductivity drastically decreases at high loadings for the molybdenum dithiolene complexes, while FeCl 3 remains effective at high loadings; and the large molybdenum complexes lead to more delocalized polarons as compared to FeCl 3 . To take advantage of the complementary doping characteristics of the molybdenum complexes and FeCl 3 , both dopants are employed simultaneously to reach high power factors at relatively low dopant concentrations.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1729737
- PAR ID:
- 10112877
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Journal of Materials Chemistry A
- Volume:
- 6
- Issue:
- 34
- ISSN:
- 2050-7488
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 16495 to 16505
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.1039/C8TA05922E
