有机半导体的分子电掺杂:基本机制与新兴掺杂剂设计规则
Molecular Electrical Doping of Organic Semiconductors: Fundamental Mechanisms and Emerging Dopant Design Rules.
作者信息
Salzmann Ingo, Heimel Georg, Oehzelt Martin, Winkler Stefanie, Koch Norbert
机构信息
Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin , Institut für Physik & IRIS Adlershof, Brook-Taylor Straße 6, 12489 Berlin, Germany.
Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin für Materialien und Energie GmbH , Bereich Solarenergieforschung, Albert-Einstein-Straße 15, 12489 Berlin, Germany.
出版信息
Acc Chem Res. 2016 Mar 15;49(3):370-8. doi: 10.1021/acs.accounts.5b00438. Epub 2016 Feb 8.
Today's information society depends on our ability to controllably dope inorganic semiconductors, such as silicon, thereby tuning their electrical properties to application-specific demands. For optoelectronic devices, organic semiconductors, that is, conjugated polymers and molecules, have emerged as superior alternative owing to the ease of tuning their optical gap through chemical variability and their potential for low-cost, large-area processing on flexible substrates. There, the potential of molecular electrical doping for improving the performance of, for example, organic light-emitting devices or organic solar cells has only recently been established. The doping efficiency, however, remains conspicuously low, highlighting the fact that the underlying mechanisms of molecular doping in organic semiconductors are only little understood compared with their inorganic counterparts. Here, we review the broad range of phenomena observed upon molecularly doping organic semiconductors and identify two distinctly different scenarios: the pairwise formation of both organic semiconductor and dopant ions on one hand and the emergence of ground state charge transfer complexes between organic semiconductor and dopant through supramolecular hybridization of their respective frontier molecular orbitals on the other hand. Evidence for the occurrence of these two scenarios is subsequently discussed on the basis of the characteristic and strikingly different signatures of the individual species involved in the respective doping processes in a variety of spectroscopic techniques. The critical importance of a statistical view of doping, rather than a bimolecular picture, is then highlighted by employing numerical simulations, which reveal one of the main differences between inorganic and organic semiconductors to be their respective density of electronic states and the doping induced changes thereof. Engineering the density of states of doped organic semiconductors, the Fermi-Dirac occupation of which ultimately determines the doping efficiency, thus emerges as key challenge. As a first step, the formation of charge transfer complexes is identified as being detrimental to the doping efficiency, which suggests sterically shielding the functional core of dopant molecules as an additional design rule to complement the requirement of low ionization energies or high electron affinities in efficient n-type or p-type dopants, respectively. In an extended outlook, we finally argue that, to fully meet this challenge, an improved understanding is required of just how the admixture of dopant molecules to organic semiconductors does affect the density of states: compared with their inorganic counterparts, traps for charge carriers are omnipresent in organic semiconductors due to structural and chemical imperfections, and Coulomb attraction between ionized dopants and free charge carriers is typically stronger in organic semiconductors owing to their lower dielectric constant. Nevertheless, encouraging progress is being made toward developing a unifying picture that captures the entire range of doping induced phenomena, from ion-pair to complex formation, in both conjugated polymers and molecules. Once completed, such a picture will provide viable guidelines for synthetic and supramolecular chemistry that will enable further technological advances in organic and hybrid organic/inorganic devices.
当今的信息社会依赖于我们可控地对无机半导体(如硅)进行掺杂的能力,从而根据特定应用需求调整其电学性质。对于光电器件而言,有机半导体,即共轭聚合物和分子,因其易于通过化学变化调节光学带隙以及在柔性基板上进行低成本大面积加工的潜力,已成为一种优越的替代材料。在那里,分子电掺杂对改善例如有机发光器件或有机太阳能电池性能的潜力直到最近才得以确立。然而,掺杂效率仍然显著偏低,这凸显了一个事实:与无机半导体相比,人们对有机半导体中分子掺杂的潜在机制了解甚少。在此,我们回顾了分子掺杂有机半导体时观察到的广泛现象,并识别出两种截然不同的情况:一方面是有机半导体和掺杂剂离子的成对形成,另一方面是通过有机半导体和掺杂剂各自前沿分子轨道的超分子杂化形成基态电荷转移复合物。随后,基于各种光谱技术中参与各自掺杂过程的单个物种的特征且显著不同的信号来讨论这两种情况发生的证据。通过数值模拟突出了掺杂统计观点而非双分子图像的至关重要性,数值模拟揭示了无机半导体和有机半导体之间的一个主要差异在于它们各自的电子态密度及其掺杂引起的变化。设计掺杂有机半导体的态密度,其费米 - 狄拉克占据最终决定掺杂效率,因此成为关键挑战。作为第一步,电荷转移复合物的形成被确定对掺杂效率不利,这表明空间位阻屏蔽掺杂剂分子的功能核心是一条额外的设计规则,以补充分别对高效 n 型或 p 型掺杂剂低电离能或高电子亲和力的要求。在一个扩展展望中,我们最后认为,为了充分应对这一挑战,需要更好地理解掺杂剂分子与有机半导体的混合究竟如何影响态密度:与无机半导体相比,由于结构和化学缺陷,电荷载流子陷阱在有机半导体中无处不在,并且由于有机半导体较低的介电常数,电离掺杂剂与自由电荷载流子之间的库仑吸引力通常更强。尽管如此,在形成一个统一的图景方面正在取得令人鼓舞的进展,该图景涵盖了共轭聚合物和分子中从离子对形成到复合物形成的整个掺杂诱导现象范围。一旦完成,这样的图景将为合成化学和超分子化学提供可行的指导方针,从而推动有机及有机/无机混合器件的进一步技术进步。