Document Type
Article
Publication Date
12-2018
Abstract
Evaluating new, promising organic molecules to make next-generation organic optoelectronic devices necessitates the evaluation of charge carrier transport performance through the semi-conducting medium. In this work, we utilize quantum chemical calculations (QCC) and kinetic Monte Carlo (KMC) simulations to predict the zero-field hole mobilities of ~100 morphologies of the benchmark polymer poly(3-hexylthiophene), with varying simulation volume, structural order, and chain-length polydispersity. Morphologies with monodisperse chains were generated previously using an optimized molecular dynamics force-field and represent a spectrum of nanostructured order. We discover that a combined consideration of backbone clustering and system-wide disorder arising from side-chain conformations are correlated with hole mobility. Furthermore, we show that strongly interconnected thiophene backbones are required for efficient charge transport. This definitively shows the role “tie-chains” play in enabling mobile charges in P3HT. By marrying QCC and KMC over multiple length- and time-scales, we demonstrate that it is now possible to routinely probe the relationship between molecular nanostructure and device performance.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Publication Information
Miller, Evan D.; Jones, Matthew L.; and Jankowski, Eric. (2018). "Tying Together Multiscale Calculations for Charge Transport in P3HT: Structural Descriptors, Morphology, and Tie-Chains". Polymers, 10(12), 1358-1 - 1358-17. https://doi.org/10.3390/polym10121358