Computational study of the influence of nanostructure on the electrical properties of a polymer LED

Abstract

One advantage in using conjugate polymers as the active component in optoelectronic devices, like light emitting diodes (LEDs), is the possibility of being deposited in solution. However, several experimental studies have shown that the nanostructure of the thin film depends on the conditions used to deposit the polymer, since it will affect the way that the long conjugated polymer chains stack and align relative to the electrodes, creating domains with different sizes and shapes. In this way, understand and control the polymer 3D nanostructure is of great importance since it will influence the efficiency of the optoelectronic device where it is used. Here we present the results obtained by us using our mesoscopic model based on a generalized dynamic Monte Carlo method to understand how the spatial arrangement of polymer strands affects the functioning of a polymer LED. Our results clearly show that the electrical properties of a polymer LED (i.e. current density, charge density, internal electric field and charge recombination) are strongly influenced by the orientation of the polymers strands relative to the electrodes at nanoscale.