Refine
Has Fulltext
- yes (1)
Year of publication
- 2002 (1) (remove)
Document Type
- Doctoral Thesis (1)
Language
- English (1)
Is part of the Bibliography
- yes (1)
Keywords
Institute
- Institut für Physik und Astronomie (1) (remove)
New polymers and low molecular compounds, suitable for organic light emitting devices and organic electronic applications, have been synthesised in this years in order to obtain electron transport characteristics compatible with requirements for applications in real plastic devices. However, despite of the technological importance and of the relevant progress in devices manufacture, fundamental physical properties of such class of materials are still not enough studied. In particular extensive presence of distributions of localised states inside the band gap has a deep impact on their electronic properties. Such presence of shallow traps as well as the influence of the sample preparation conditions on deep and shallow localised states have not been, until now, systematically explored. The thermal techniques are powerful tools in order to study localised levels in inorganic and organic materials. Thermally stimulated luminescence (TSL), thermally stimulated currents (TSC) and thermally stimulated depolarisation currents (TSDC) allow to deeply look to shallow and deep trap levels as well as they permit to study, in synergy with dielectric spectroscopy (DES), polarisation and depolarisation effects. We studied, by means of numerical simulations, the first and the second order kinetic equations characterised by negligible and strong re-trapping respectively. We included in the equations Gaussian, exponential and quasi-continuous distributions of localised states. The shapes of the theoretical peaks have been investigated by means of systematic variation of the two main parameters of the equations, i. e. the energy trap depth E and the frequency factor a and of the parameters regulating the distributions, in particular for a Gaussian distribution the distribution width s and the integration limits. The theoretical findings have been applied to experimental glow curves. Thin films of polymers and low molecular compounds. Polyphenylquinoxalines, trisphenylquinoxalines and oxadiazoles, studied because of their technological relevance, show complex thermograms, having several levels of localised states and depolarisation peaks. In particular well ordered films of an amphiphilic substituted 2-(p-nitrophenyl)-5-(p-undecylamidophenyl)-1,3,4-oxadiazole (NADPO) are characterised by rich TSL thermograms. A wide region of shallow traps, localised at Em = 4 meV, has been successfully fit by means of a first order kinetic equation having a Gaussian distribution of localised states. Two further peaks, having a different origin, have been characterised. The peaks at Tm = 221.5 K and Tm = 254.2 have activation energy of Em= 0.63 eV and Em = 0.66 eV, frequency factor s = 2.4x1012 s-1 and s = 1.85x1011 s-1, distribution width s = 0.045 eV and s = 0.088 eV respectively. Increasing the number of thermal cycle, a peak, probably connected with structural defects, appears at Tm = 197.7 K. The numerical analysis of this peak was performed by means of a first order equation containing a Gaussian distribution of traps. The activation energy of the trap level is centred at Em = 0.55 eV. The distribution is perfectly symmetric with a quite small width s = 0.028 eV. The frequency factor is s = 1.15 x 1012 s-1, resulting of the same order of magnitude of its neighbour peak at Tm = 221.5 K, having both, probably, the same origin. Furthermore the work demonstrates that the shape of the glow curves is strongly influenced by the excitation temperature and by the thermal cycles. For that reason Gaussian distributions of localised states can be confused with exponential distributions if the previous thermal history of the samples is not adequately considered.