How Does Paracrystallinity Influence Charge Transport in Conjugated Polymers?

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SUMMARY

The discussion centers on the influence of paracrystallinity on charge transport in conjugated polymers, specifically in the context of P3HT. It establishes that moderate paracrystalline disorder (g > 5%) minimally affects the density of states (DOS), while significant disorder (g ~ 10%) leads to a broad distribution of localized states. The researchers conclude that interconnected aggregates, even when disordered, are crucial for high carrier mobility, challenging the notion that increased crystallinity is essential. The findings are supported by the paper "A general relationship between disorder, aggregation and charge transport in conjugated polymers" by Noriega et al.

PREREQUISITES
  • Understanding of electronic band structures
  • Familiarity with density of states (DOS) concepts
  • Knowledge of charge transport mechanisms in polymers
  • Basic principles of quantum mechanics
NEXT STEPS
  • Study the paper "A general relationship between disorder, aggregation and charge transport in conjugated polymers" by Noriega et al.
  • Learn about localization length and its implications in disordered systems
  • Explore the role of short-range order in enhancing charge transfer in conjugated polymers
  • Investigate advanced quantum mechanics courses focusing on wave functions and eigenstates
USEFUL FOR

Researchers, materials scientists, and engineers involved in organic electronics, particularly those focused on optimizing charge transport in conjugated polymers.

anni
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TL;DR
In Fact, I tried to understand the result (Figure 3) of a paper named "A general relationship between disorder, aggregation and charge transport in conjugated polymers", but because of some special concept I could not understand. would you please explain the result of Figure 3?
Thanks
"In the case of negligible paracrystallinity, the density of states (DOS) of the 1D pi-stack depends on the amount of on-site disorder generating a Gaussian tail of states extending into the bandgap (Fig. 3a). Typical pi-stacks of conjugated polymers exhibit moderate amounts of paracrystalline disorder (g >5%; see below). Under these conditions, the DOS of the aggregate is hardly affected by on-site disorder and is determined by the amount of paracrystallinity (Fig. 3c,d). The spatial extent of the calculated wavefunctions for the disordered stack (Fig. 3e-h) shows that disorder-induced states that lie deeper into the DOS tail are increasingly localized. Even states within the originally `delocalized band' become more localized with increasing paracrystallinity. In the limit of large positional disorder (g ~10%), the distinction between band and tail disappears: a single broad distribution of localized states with a monotonically decreasing DOS extends into the bandgap, reproducing well-known results of electronic structure theory of amorphous materials34,35. In the intermediate paracrystallinity regime (g ~3-7%) we observe a coexistence of localized and delocalized states, indicating that in paracrystalline aggregates charge is transported by a mechanism where mobile charge is temporarily trapped in localized states, akin to multiple trapping and release."
 

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There's many high-level concepts in there.
What's your background knowledge on this subject?
 
Dr_Nate said:
There's many high-level concepts in there.
What's your background knowledge on this subject?
polymers
 
anni said:
polymers
Do you understand the concepts of electronic band structures, density of states, and band gaps well?
 
Dr_Nate said:
Do you understand the concepts of electronic band structures, density of states, and band gaps well?

I read about band gap and DOS.

DOS: The density of state function describes the number of states that are available in a system and is essential for determining the carrier concentration and energy distributions of carriers within a semiconductors.

I did not understand : One-site disordered Localization length Eigenstates of the disordered Hamiltonian
If you can kindly tell me about the concept and refer me to a book or paper I appreciate it.
 
To truly understand this stuff you're going to need a course in quantum mechanics to start to understand wave functions.
anni said:
I did not understand : One-site disordered Localization length Eigenstates of the disordered Hamiltonian
If you can kindly tell me about the concept and refer me to a book or paper I appreciate it.
I would need to read the paper to truly understand what's going on but I'll tell you what I think they've done. They've used quantum mechanics to solve a particular model that they made up. Localization length probably refers to a measure of how far the electron wave function's weight is distributed away from the lattice (or maybe atomic site).
 
Dr_Nate said:
To truly understand this stuff you're going to need a course in quantum mechanics to start to understand wave functions.

I would need to read the paper to truly understand what's going on but I'll tell you what I think they've done. They've used quantum mechanics to solve a particular model that they made up. Localization length probably refers to a measure of how far the electron wave function's weight is distributed away from the lattice (or maybe atomic site).
Thank you so much for your reply. I think that they wanted to show the effect of disorder in polymer structure on DOS. I did not understand what they concluded from that?
would you please explain more about localization length?
They want to show relationship between disorder/order and charge transfer in P3HT. They found that short-range order improve charge transfer.
 
You're going to have to read their conclusions for that.
 
There is not any conclusion part that explain specifically mention the result of this picture.
 
  • #10
R. Noriega, J. Rivnay, K. Vandewal, F. P. V. Koch, N. Stingelin, P. Smith, M. F. Toney, A. Salleo, “A general relationship between disorder, aggregation and charge transport in conjugated polymers”, Nat. Mater., Advanced Online Publication (August 14, 2013), DOI: 10.1038/nmat3722
https://www-ssrl.slac.stanford.edu/.../science-highlights/pdf/conjugatedpolymer.pdf
OCR extract said:
The researchers conclude that the unifying requirement for high carrier mobility is the presence of aggregates that are interconnected, even if the aggregates are small and disordered. The key to designing high-mobility polymers is not an increased crystallinity but rather an enhanced tolerance to an inevitably large amount of molecular disorder within the aggregates by allowing more efficient intra- and intermolecular charge transport and transfer. This generalization explains the seemingly contradicting high performance of recently reported, poorly ordered polymers and suggests molecular design strategies to further improve the performance of future generations of organic electronic materials.

Maybe this discussion will be useful in understanding the paper;
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/08/130804144452.htm
 

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