High-work-function material

Parker [55] studied the IN properties of MEH-PPV sandwiched between various low-and high work-function materials. He proposed a model for such photodiodes, where the charge carriers are transported in a rigid band model. Electrons and holes can tunnel into or leave the polymer when the applied field tilts the polymer bands so that the tunnel barriers can be overcome. It must be noted that a rigid band model is only appropriate for very low intrinsic carrier concentrations in MEH-PPV. Capacitance-voltage measurements for these devices indicated an upper limit for the dark carrier concentration of 1014 cm"3. Further measurements of the built in fields of MEH-PPV sandwiched between metal electrodes are in agreement with the results found by Parker. Electro absorption measurements [56, 57] showed that various metals did not introduce interface states in the single-particle gap of the polymer that pins the Schottky contact. Of course this does not imply that the metal and the polymer do not interact [58, 59] but these interactions do not pin the Schottky barrier. 

Electroluminescence (EL) is the phenomenon by which electrical energy is converted into luminous energy by the recombination of electrons and holes in the emissive material [8], The basic structure of an OLED consists of a thin film of organic material sandwiched between two electrodes, an anode of high-work-function material such as indium tin oxide (ITO) on a glass substrate, and a cathode of a low-work-function metal such as calcium (Ca), magnesium (Mg), or aluminum (Al) or an alloy such as Mg Ag. 

A thin layer deposited between the electrode and the charge transport material can be used to modify the injection process. Some of these arc (relatively poor) conductors and should be viewed as electrode materials in their own right, for example the polymers polyaniline (PAni) [81-83] and polyethylenedioxythiophene (PEDT or PEDOT) [83, 841 heavily doped with anions to be intrinsically conducting. They have work functions of approximately 5.0 cV [75] and therefore are used as anode materials, typically on top of 1TO, which is present to provide lateral conductivity. Thin layers of transition metal oxide on ITO have also been shown [74J to have better injection properties than ITO itself. Again these materials (oxides of ruthenium, molybdenum or vanadium) have high work functions, but because of their low conductivity cannot be used alone as the electrode. 

---