Charge conjugated polymers

Although most of the research on PECs has been done by mixing the two polyelectrolyte types, this approach is not possible for the PEDOTPSS complex. Similar to most charged conjugated polymers, the PEDOT polycation is not soluble in any solvent. Therefore the synthesis of this polycation needs to be performed in the presence of PSS so that the PEC complex is formed in situ as the polycation chain grows. This requirement forms a strong limitation for the analysis of PEDOT since a cationic PEDOT chain can only be obtained in combination with a suitable polyanion as PEC. 

These conjugated polymers can be chemically and electrochemically reduced and reoxidized in a reversible manner. In all cases the charges on the polymer backbone must be compensated by ions from the reaction medium which are then incorporated into the polymer lattice. The rate of the doping process is dependent on the mobiHty of these charge compensating ions into and out of the polymer matrix. 

In low-dimensional systems, such as quantum-confined. semiconductors and conjugated polymers, the first step of optical absorption is the creation of bound electron-hole pairs, known as excitons [34). Charge photogcncration (CPG) occurs when excitons break into positive and negative carriers. This process is of essential importance both for the understanding of the fundamental physics of these materials and for applications in photovoltaic devices and photodctcctors. Since exciton dissociation can be affected by an external electric field, field-induced spectroscopy is a powerful tool for studying CPG. 

We have studied the temporal dynamics of CPG in m-LPPP by performing field-assisted pump-probe experiments on LED structures, as described in Section 8.3.2. The narrow line-width PA assigned to polarons (see Section 8.5.2) is a fingerprint of charge generation in m-LPPP. Monitoring the dynamics of these PA band enables us, for the first time, to directly observe the CPG dynamics in a conjugated polymer with sub-picosecond time resolution [40],... 

Generally, photooxidation has an even stronger negative effect on lasing and stimulated emission in conjugated polymers than it has on the EL-performance. It not only reduces the number of excited 5j states but additionally creates charged absorbing species that partly compensate the stimulated emission due to the neutral excited states. 

Charge Carrier Transport in Conjugated Polymers 12.4.3.1 Timc-of-Flight Studies... 

The chapter is organized as follows the second section will discuss the photophysics of conjugated polymer/fullerene composites as a standard model for a charge-generating layer in plastic solar cells. Pristine polymer devices will be discussed in the third section while bilayer and interpenetrating network devices are presented in Sections 4 and 5. Section 6 contains some remarks on large area plastic solar cells and Section 7 conclusions. 

Comparison of the spectral response and of the power efficiency of these first conjugated polymer/fullerene bilayer devices with single layer pure conjugated polymer devices showed that the large potential of the photoinduced charge transfer of a donor-acceptor system was not fully exploited in the bilayers. The devices still suffer from antibatic behavior as well as from a low power conversion efficiency. However, the diode behavior, i.e. the rectification of these devices, was excellent. 

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