Structure Prediction of Epitaxial Organic Interfaces with Ogre, Demonstrated for TCNQ on TTF

TL;DR

This paper introduces Ogre, an open-source computational method for predicting the structure of epitaxial organic interfaces, demonstrated on TCNQ on TTF, achieving accurate structural and electronic predictions.

Contribution

We developed Ogre, a lattice and surface matching method with Bayesian optimization and neural network potentials, to predict organic epitaxial interface structures, filling a gap in computational organic interface modeling.

Findings

Ogre accurately predicts the most stable TCNQ on TTF interface configuration.

The predicted interface structure's electronic properties match experimental UPS data.

The method is validated on a real organic heterointerface with known experimental data.

Abstract

Highly ordered epitaxial interfaces between organic semiconductors are considered as a promising avenue for enhancing the performance of organic electronic devices including solar cells, light emitting diodes, and transistors, thanks to their well-controlled, uniform electronic properties and high carrier mobilities. Although the phenomenon of organic epitaxy has been known for decades, computational methods for structure prediction of epitaxial organic interfaces have lagged far behind the existing methods for their inorganic counterparts. We present a method for structure prediction of epitaxial organic interfaces based on lattice matching followed by surface matching, implemented in the open-source Python package, Ogre. The lattice matching step produces domain-matched interfaces, where commensurability is achieved with different integer multiples of the substrate and film unit cells. In the surface matching step, Bayesian optimization (BO) is used to find the interfacial distance and registry between the substrate and film. The BO objective function is based on dispersion corrected deep neural network interatomic potentials, shown to be in excellent agreement with density functional theory (DFT). The application of Ogre is demonstrated for an epitaxial interface of 7,7,8,8-tetracyanoquinodimethane (TCNQ) on tetrathiafulvalene (TTF), whose electronic structure has been probed by ultraviolet photoemission spectroscopy (UPS), but whose structure had been hitherto unknown [Organic Electronics 48, 371 (2017)]. We find that TCNQ(001) on top of TTF(100) is the most stable interface configuration, closely followed by TCNQ(010) on top of TTF(100). The density of states, calculated using DFT, is in excellent agreement with UPS, including the presence of an interface charge transfer state.