Photomultiplication in disordered unipolar organic materials

Photomultiplication in conventional inorganic semiconductors has been known and used for decades, the underiving mechanism being multiplication by impact ionization triggered by hot carriers. Since neither carrier heating by an electric field nor avalanche multiplication are possible in strongly disordered organic solids, charge multiplication seems to be highly unlikely in these materials. However, here the photomultiplication observed in the bulk of a unipolar disordered organic semiconductor is reported. The proportion of extracted carriers to incident photons is experimentally determined to be in excess of 3000 % in a single-layer device of the air-stable, n-type organic semiconductor F16CuPc (PC: phthalocyanine). This effect is explained in terms of exciton quenching by localized charges, the subsequent promotion of these detrapped charges to the high-mobility energy band of the density-of-states (DOS) distribution, and subsequent slow equilibration within this broad intrinsic DOS. Such a mechanism allows multiple replenishment of the optically released charge by mobile carriers injected from an Ohmic electrode. Also shown is photomultiplication in double-layer devices composed of layers of donor and acceptor small-molecule materials. This result implies that, apart from exciton dissociation at a donor/acceptor interface, exciton energy transfer to trapped carriers is a complementary photoconductivity process in organic solar cells. This new insight paves the way to cheap, highly efficient organic photodetectors on flexible substrates for numerous applications.