Regioregularity vs Regiorandomness: Effect on Photocarrier Transport in Poly(3-hexylthiophene)

Abstract

The time-of-flight technique has been used to study transports of photocarriers in regioregular and regiorandom poly(3-hexylthiophene) (P3HT) films by fabricating indium-tin-oxide/P3HT/Al sandwich cell. It has been found that regularity in the coupling of monomers, head-to-tail (HT) has a marked effect on electrical properties and photocarrier transport in P3HT. Both regular and random P3HT films exhibit a dispersive photocurrent response with the positive sign of photocarrier (hole). The room temperature hole mobility of regioregular P3HT is estimated to be 1.21 ×10^-3 cm²/V·s and is one order of magnitude larger than that of the random one. The mobility in regioregular P3HT is almost independent of the applied field while that of random P3HT shows a positive field dependence at the field larger than 1.0 ×10⁵ V/cm.