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RESEARCHERS from the University of Bath are investigating ways to improve the electrical performance of organic semiconductors via doping.
Traditional silicon-based semiconductors are difficult to manufacture, requiring a lot of energy to produce. For example, it is estimated that solar cells made from silicon can take a year to pay back the total energy consumed in their manufacture.
Organic semiconductors promise to be cheaper to make, take less energy to produce, and allow for flexible electronics. Organic semiconducting polymers can be dissolved in a solvent, then printed onto a surface.
However, these materials have a disordered structure (as opposed to the crystalline structure in materials like silicon), resulting in inferior electrical performance that continues to obstruct their development. Simply put, organic semiconductors are less efficient at conducting electricity.
It is possible to improve this performance by doping organic semiconductors, mixing them with molecules that add electrical charges to the polymer. However, previous doping attempts have been fairly ineffective in producing high performance organic semiconductor devices.
The team from the University of Bath, collaborating with scientists in Germany and The Netherlands, studied the reasons behind this difficulty.
The study, published in the journal Nature Communications, found that the size and geometrical position of the doping molecule used had an effect on the efficiency of the semiconductor material.
According to the leader of the study, Dr Enrico Da Como from the University of Bath’s Department of Physics, the doping molecule can bind to the organic semiconducting polymer in several different orientations, some of which make a more effective semiconductor than others. The random nature of the orientations resulted in the lacklustre quality from previous doping attempts.
“Our work suggests that if you use a larger doping molecule, you limit the number of ways it can bind to the polymer, making the efficiency of the semiconductor more consistent,” he explained.