Energetic disorder at the metal/organic semiconductor interface

TL;DR

This paper investigates how image forces at metal/organic interfaces reduce energetic disorder, especially near the surface, impacting charge injection processes in organic semiconductors.

Contribution

It demonstrates that image forces significantly decrease energetic disorder variance at the interface, providing new insights into charge injection mechanisms.

Findings

Energetic disorder variance is reduced near the metal interface.

Image forces influence charge injection efficiency.

Disorder reduction occurs within the first few molecular layers.

Abstract

The physics of organic semiconductors is dominated by the effects of energetic disorder. We show that image forces reduce the electrostatic component of the total energetic disorder near an interface with a metal electrode. Typically, the variance of energetic disorder is dramatically reduced at the first few layers of organic semiconductor molecules adjacent to the metal electrode. Implications for charge injection into organic semiconductors are discussed.