Electronic structure spectroscopy of organic semiconductors by energy resolved-electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (ER-EIS)

Abstract

Organic electronic applications are envisioned to address broad markets, which includes flexible displays, electronic papers, sensors, disposable and wearable electronics, and medical and biophysical applications, leading to a tremendous amount of interest from both academia and industry in the study of devices. These fields of science and technology constitute interdisciplinary fields that cover physics, chemistry, biology, and materials science, leading, as a wanted output, to the elucidation of physical and chemical properties, as well as structures, fabrication, and performance evaluation of devices and the creation of new knowledge underlying the operation of organic devices using new synthesized organic materials - organic semiconductors. We testify the situation when the available organic electronic applications sometimes lack a theoretical background. The cause may be the complicated properties of disordered, weak bounded, molecular materials with properties different from their inorganic counterparts. One of the basic information-rich resources is the electronic structure of organic semiconductors, elucidated by the methods, hardly possible to be transferred from the branch of inorganic semiconductors. Electrochemical spectroscopic methods, in general, and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy, in particular, tend and seem to fill this gap. In this Perspective article, the energy resolved-electrochemical impedance spectroscopic method for electronic structure studies of surface and bulk of organic semiconductors is presented, and its theoretical and implementation background is highlighted. To show the method's properties and strength, both as to the wide energy and excessive dynamic range, the basic measurements on polymeric materials and D-A blends are introduced, and to highlight its broad applicability, the results on polysilanes degradability, gap engineering of non-fullerene D-A blends, and electron structure spectroscopy of an inorganic nanocrystalline film are highlighted. In the outlook and perspective, the electrolyte/polymer interface will be studied in general and specifically devoted to the morphological, transport, and recombination properties of organic semiconductors and biophysical materials. © 2020 Author(s).