Charge carrier transport and recombination in disordered materials

Abstract

In this brief review the methods for investigation of charge carrier transport and recombination in thin layers of disordered materials and the obtained results are discussed. The method of charge carrier extraction by linearly increasing voltage (CELIV) is useful for the determination of mobility, bulk conductivity and density of equilibrium charge carriers. The extraction of photogenerated charge carriers (photo-CELIV) allows one to independently investigate relaxation of both the mobility and density of photogenerated charge carriers. The extraction of injected charge carriers (i-CELIV) is effective for the independent investigation of transport peculiarities of both injected holes and electrons in bulk heterojunctions. For the investigation of charge carrier recombination we proposed integral time-of-flight (TOF) and double-injection (DI) current transient methods. The methods allowed us to obtain the following significant results: to determine the reason of the conductivity dependence on electric field strength and temperature in the amorphous and microcrystalline hydrogenated silicon and π-conjugated polymers, the time dependent Langevin recombination, the impact of morphology on charge carrier mobility, the reason of reduced Langevin recombination in RR-PHT (regioregular poly(3-hexylthiophene))/PCBM (1-(3-methoxycarbonyl)propyl-1phenyl-[6,6]-methanofullerene) bulk heterojunction structures – 2D Langevin recombination; and to evaluate that the mobility of holes is predetermined by off-diagonal dispersion in poly-PbO.