AVS 51st International Symposium
    Surface Science Wednesday Sessions
       Session SS+OF-WeA

Paper SS+OF-WeA7
Energy Level Alignment at Organic Interfaces: Interface Induced Gap States and Charge Neutrality Levels

Wednesday, November 17, 2004, 4:00 pm, Room 213B

Session: Contacts to Molecules and Molecular Films
Presenter: T.U. Kampen, Fritz-Haber-Institut der Max-Planck-Gesellschaft, Germany
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The energy level alignment at organic interfaces determines the efficiency of charge injection into organic films. Quite often the vacuum level alignment rule has been used to determine the energy level alignment at organic interfaces. Here, barrier heights can simply be calculated using the ionisation potentials or electron affinities of semiconductors materials and work functions of metals. For organic interfaces a conclusion has been reached that in general the vacuum levels do not align. At intimate, abrupt, and defect free interfaces of inorganic semiconductors interface induced gap states are the primary mechanism determining the energy level alignment. These interface states derive from the bulk states and their character changes across the band gap from more acceptor-like closer to the conduction band to predominantly donor-like nearer to the valence band. The branch point where the character changes has the significance of a charge neutrality level. This work shows that the concept of interface induced gap states may also be applied to organic interfaces. The charge neutrality levels of PTCDA, DiMe-PTCDI, and CuPc are found to be 1.96 eV, 1.93 eV, and 0.51 eV above the HOMO, respectively.