| AVS 59th Annual International Symposium and Exhibition | |
| Electron Transport at the Nanoscale Focus Topic | Thursday Sessions |
| Session ET+SS+GR+SP-ThA |
| Session: | Electron Transport at the Nanoscale: Molecules and Defects |
| Presenter: | W. Wang, University of South Florida |
| Authors: | W. Wang, University of South Florida R. Schlaf, University of South Florida |
| Correspondent: | Click to Email |
The charge neutrality levels (CNL) of poly-(3-hexylthiophene) (P3HT) and poly-[2-methoxy-5-(2’-ethylhexyloxy)-p-phenylene vinylene] (MEH-PPV) were determined. This was achieved by investigating a number of interfaces between these conjugated polymers and metals with varying work function. The interfaces were fabricated using the electrospray deposition technique, which allows the direct deposition of polymers from solution into vacuum environment without interference of significant surface contamination. This enabled the measurement of the charge injection barriers at clean polymer interfaces without contamination interlayer with photoemission spectroscopy. The results of these measurements enabled the establishment of the correlation between barrier heights and substrate. The results indicate that conjugated polymer interfaces form in a similar fashion as small molecular materials interfaces to metals as described by the ‘induced density of states’ (IDIS) model. In contrast, the presented results also suggest that the ‘integer charge transfer ‘ (ICT) model, which was developed for polymer/metal interfaces, only describes interfaces prepared under atmosphere or inert environment, where the presence of contamination weakens the interaction between the materials in contact.