CurrentVoltage Characteristics of Polymer LightEmitting Diodes.pdfVIP

Current-Voltage Characteristics of Polymer Light-Emitting Diodes E. M. Conwella,b and M.W. Wua a Center for Photoinduced Charge Transfer, Chemistry Department, University of Rochester, Rochester, New York 14627 b Xerox Corporation, Wilson Center for Technology, 114-22D, Webster, New York 14580 7 9 9 1 ABSTRACT l Conduction in pristine conjugated polymers (other than polyacetylene) is by polaron hopping u J between sites corresponding to conjugation lengths. The strong increase of current I with voltage 9 V observed for both emission-limited and ohmic contacts is due in large part to mobility increase ] t as increasing field makes it more possible to overcome internal barriers, such as energy differences f o s between sites. For emission-limited contacts an additional source of nonlinear increase of I with . t increasing V is greater ability to escpe return to the injecting electrode due to the image force. For a m ohmic contacts additional nonlinearity comes from space charge effects. We are able to fit I vs. V - d for electron or hole conduction in some poly(p-phenylene vinylene), PPV, derivatives with ohmic n o contacts for reasonable values of the parameters involved. c [ 1 Keywords: contacts, mobility variation with field, polarons, hopping, disorder v 2 2. INTRODUCTION 9 0 7 Contact injection into conducting polymers has usually been described as tunneling of electrons or 0 holes into a broad conduction or valence band, respectively, in the polymer through interface barriers 7 9 arising from the band offset between the polymer and the metal electrod