Organic light-emitting diodes (OLED) offer the potential to replace conventional light sources such as incandescent bulbs and fluorescent tubes. The question which thin-film technology is most favorable to produce OLED on an industrial scale is still unanswered. The most established technology for the deposition of small-molecule organic layers is vacuum thermal evaporation. A comparably novel technology is organic vapor phase deposition (OVPD), which offers some unique features in terms of adjustable process parameters such as deposition chamber pressure (P) and substrate temperature (TS). The impact of these parameters on the morphology of organic single layers as well as on the performance of OLED is mostly unknown. In this work, phosphorescent red OLED were produced with different TS and a strong influence on the device efficiency was found. Atomic force microscopy measurements were conducted to investigate the morphology of the hole injection and hole transport layers of the devices deposited at different TS. In addition to this, the influence of TS and P on the performance of fluorescent blue OLED and the morphology of organic single layers was tested. By varying TS and P for the emission layer only, current efficiencies in the range from 4.3 to 6.8 cd/A were found despite the fact that all devices had the same structure. Atomic force microscopy measurements conducted on organic single layers which were deposited at the same process conditions showed rms values ranging from 1.4 to 57 nm.

We present a device model for light-emitting, ambipolar, organic field-effect transistors based on the gradual channel approximation. The model results are in very good agreement with recent experimental data. Trapping of injected carriers in localized states in the channel region is shown to be an important mechanism that can strongly affect the transfer characteristics and the light emission of these devices.

Strong hysteresis in the I-V characteristics of organic thin film transistors are a severe obstacle for the implementation of large circuits. It therefore is a key success factor for the optimization and widespread application of organic electronics to understand the underlying principles. We report the fabrication of two types of pentacene transistors with either polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) or SiO2 as gate dielectric. These devices respond to transient measurement sweeps with a fundamentally different I-V hysteresis. A self-contained model is presented, which associates this behavior with the influence of traps at the SiO2/pentacene interface and polarization in the PVA layer. Simulations employing the commercial drift-diffusion tool SENTAURUSTM are performed to verify our models.

Until recently, the synthesis of polythiophenes using Suzuki chemistry has proven difficult because of the ready protodeborylation of thiophene boronates. However, we now report that the new generation of bulky, electron-rich Pd(0)-phosphane catalysts are effective and reliable for the preparation of regioregular polyalkylthiophenes using Suzuki coupling. Moreover, the monomers can be prepared in high yield by Ir-catalysed borylation, without the need for strong organolithium bases, making this potentially a highly functional group-tolerant approach to polyalkylthiophene derivatives. Perfluoroalkylthiophenes also undergo this reaction.

We present photoconductivity of high-performance functionalized pentacene and anthradithiophene thin films on time scales from picoseconds to many seconds after photoexcitation. The polycrystalline thin films were deposited from solution on glass substrates with patterned interdigitated aluminum electrodes. In studies of fast transient photoconductivity, the samples were excited with laser pulses of ~100 fs duration at a wavelength of 400 nm, and the photocurrent due to transport of photoexcited charge carriers was monitored using 50 GHz digital sampling oscilloscope. The photoconductivity at longer (milliseconds through seconds) time scales was investigated using continuous wave (cw) illumination and a source-delay-measure unit. Both experiments were performed under conditions of varied electric field strength, fluence and temperature. In all samples, we observed fast charge carrier photogeneration (<30 ps, limited by time resolution of our setup) followed by decay of the photocurrent over the period of 5-50 ns, depending on the material, due to charge trapping and recombination, linear dependence of the peak photoconductivity on the fluence and super-linear dependence of the peak photocurrent on the applied electric field.

We monitor in real time photoinduced charge injection at the interface between a fluorinated copper phthalocyanine layer (CuPcF16) deposited by thermal evaporation on top of a p - doped GaAs (100) wafer. Literature data on the electron affinity of CuPcF16 (5.2 eV respect to vacuum level) combined with photoemission measurements indicates an energy offset of 1.1 eV for the GaAs conduction band respect to the CuPcF16 LUMO level. This suggests that charge transfer at the organic - inorganic interface is feasible. We study bilayers of GaAs and CuPcF16 thin films (25 nm) by pump - probe spectroscopy with 200 fs time resolution. Pump photons at 780 nm excites the CuPcF16 layer whereas probe photons in the visible range, reflected by the GaAs surface, monitor induced changes at the interface. We observe a strong photoinduced absorption band centered around 560 nm which appears during the pulse duration, shows a build-up dynamics and persists beyond 0.2 ns. This band cannot be attributed to single material contribution, as demonstrated by test experiments with single layers. By applying steady state (CW) electromodulated spectroscopy we identify charge state absorption in CuPcF16 in the same spectral region as the photoinduced absorption band. We thus assign our transient dynamics to formation of CuPcF16 ions at the interface, following charge injection. On account of the rapid charge formation we identify this system as a potential candidate for the fabrication of hybrid photodiodes.

We have fabricated solution-processed thin films of pentacene by casting solution on a substrate and vaporizing solvent. The films with large oriented platelet domains were obtained by directionally grown condition. Molecular alignment in the directionally grown grains has been studied by several kinds of structural analysis. Oriented domains with the width of several hundreds microns and the length in an order of cm of the films were confirmed by polarized microscopy. In-plane crystalline structure of the domain has been studied by grazing incidence X-ray diffraction (GIXD) and strong anisotropy of in-plane crystalline structure was confirmed. Crystalline growth direction of the film was determined to be b-axis from both transmission electron diffraction and GIXD. Thin films transistors (TFTs) with directionally oriented domains of the films were fabricated on electrode patterned substrate. The observed maximum carrier mobility of 2.7 cm2/Vs was comparable to that of single crystal, which indicated that the quality of the film was almost identical with the single crystal. Correlation between FET performance and growth direction was studied and preferred performance of TFTs with the film grown perpendicularly to the channel was observed.