Letter abstract


Nature Materials 8, 572 - 575 (2009)
Published online: 7 June 2009 | doi:10.1038/nmat2470

Subject Categories: Polymers | Computation, modelling and theory | Molecular electronics | Liquid crystals | Semiconductors

Nonlinear transport in semiconducting polymers at high carrier densities

Jonathan D. Yuen1, Reghu Menon1,2, Nelson E. Coates1, Ebinazar B. Namdas1, Shinuk Cho1, Scott T. Hannahs3, Daniel Moses1 & Alan J. Heeger1

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Conducting and semiconducting polymers are important materials in the development of printed, flexible, large-area electronics such as flat-panel displays and photovoltaic cells. There has been rapid progress in developing conjugated polymers with high transport mobility required for high-performance field-effect transistors (FETs), beginning1 with mobilities around 10-4 cm2 V-1 s-1 to a recent report2 of 1 cm2 V-1 s-1 for poly(2,5-bis(3-tetradecylthiophen-2-yl)thieno[3,2-b]thiophene) (PBTTT). Here, the electrical properties of PBTTT are studied at high charge densities both as the semiconductor layer in FETs and in electrochemically doped films to determine the transport mechanism. We show that data obtained using a wide range of parameters (temperature, gate-induced carrier density, source–drain voltage and doping level) scale onto the universal curve predicted for transport in the Luttinger liquid description of the one-dimensional 'metal'.

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  1. Center for Polymers and Organic Solids, University of California at Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, California 93106, USA
  2. Department of Physics, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore 560012, India
  3. National High Magnetic Field Laboratory, Florida State University, Tallahassee, Florida 32310, USA

Correspondence to: Alan J. Heeger1 e-mail: ajhe@physics.ucsb.edu



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