journal article·2020-12-22Open access

Substrate-Independent Energy-Level Pinning of an Organic Semiconductor Providing Versatile Hole-Injection Electrodes

Tianshu Zhai, Rongbin Wang, Takayoshi Katase, Frances Quigley, Hiromichi Ohta, Patrick Amsalem, Norbert Koch, Steffen Duhm

ACS Applied Electronic Materials· Volume 2· Issue 12

Abstract

Tailor-made electrode work functions are indispensable to control energy-level offsets at the interfaces of (opto-)electronic devices. We show by means of photoelectron spectroscopy that several nanometer thick layers of the organic semiconductor 1,4,5,8,9,12-hexaazatriphenylene-2,3,6,7,10,11-hexacarbonitrile (HAT-CN) on virtually all substrates provide hole-injecting electrodes with work functions of around 5.60 eV. This substrate-independent energy-level alignment is due to a relatively large density of gap states in HAT-CN thin films, which is clearly visible in the photoemission data. Furthermore, this additional density of occupied states makes the wide-gap semiconductor thin films sufficiently conductive for electrode applications. Moreover, our study highlights a quite intriguing energy-level alignment scenario as the Fermi-level in HAT-CN thin films is located far from the midgap position, this is rather uncommon for undoped organic semiconductor thin films.
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Research context

OpenAlex topics: Organic Electronics and Photovoltaics · Organic Light-Emitting Diodes Research · Molecular Junctions and Nanostructures

SciVX discovery tags are terminology-based. OpenAlex topics are source-provided classifications.

Affiliations

Institute of Functional Nano & Soft Materials (FUNSOM), Jiangsu Key Laboratory for Carbon-Based Functional Materials & Devices and Joint International Research Laboratory of Carbon-Based Functional Materials and Devices, Soochow University, Suzhou 215123, People’s Republic of China

Institut für Physik & IRIS Adlershof, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, 12489 Berlin, Germany

Laboratory for Materials and Structures, Institute of Innovative Research, Tokyo Institute of Technology, Yokohama 226−8503, Japan

School of Physics, Trinity College Dublin, University of Dublin, College Green, Dublin 2, Ireland

Research Institute for Electronic Science, Hokkaido University, Sapporo 001-0020, Japan

Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin für Materialien und Energie GmbH, 12489 Berlin, Germany

Funding

State Administration of Foreign Experts Affairs · Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst · Ministry of Education of the People's Republic of China · Ministry of Science and Technology of the People's Republic of China · Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft · Collaborative Innovation Center of Suzhou Nano Science & Technology

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