2D coherent charge transport in highly ordered conducting polymers doped by solid state diffusion

• Published in: Nature materials Vol. 15; no. 8; pp. 896 - 902
• Main Authors: Kang, Keehoon, Watanabe, Shun, Broch, Katharina, Sepe, Alessandro, Brown, Adam, Nasrallah, Iyad, Nikolka, Mark, Fei, Zhuping, Heeney, Martin, Matsumoto, Daisuke, Marumoto, Kazuhiro, Tanaka, Hisaaki, Kuroda, Shin-Ichi, Sirringhaus, Henning
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: England Nature Publishing Group 01.08.2016
• Subjects: Charge carrier capture; Charge transport; Coherence; Conducting polymers; Diffusion; Dopants; Microstructure; Polymers; Semiconductor doping; Semiconductors; Solid state
• ISSN: 1476-1122; 1476-4660
• DOI: 10.1038/nmat4634

Doping is one of the most important methods to control charge carrier concentration in semiconductors. Ideally, the introduction of dopants should not perturb the ordered microstructure of the semiconducting host. In some systems, such as modulation-doped inorganic semiconductors or molecular charge transfer crystals, this can be achieved by spatially separating the dopants from the charge transport pathways. However, in conducting polymers, dopants tend to be randomly distributed within the conjugated polymer, and as a result the transport properties are strongly affected by the resulting structural and electronic disorder. Here, we show that in the highly ordered lamellar microstructure of a regioregular thiophene-based conjugated polymer, a small-molecule p-type dopant can be incorporated by solid state diffusion into the layers of solubilizing side chains without disrupting the conjugated layers. In contrast to more disordered systems, this allows us to observe coherent, free-electron-like charge transport properties, including a nearly ideal Hall effect in a wide temperature range, a positive magnetoconductance due to weak localization and the Pauli paramagnetic spin susceptibility.