Chemical and structural effects on the electronic transport in organic single crystals

Effects induced by chemical and structural inhomogeneities on the electronic transport in organic crystals with the focus on highly-ordered polyacenes are discussed in this paper. The material class chosen is of great importance as polyacenes are widely studied with perspectives on applications in thin film devices. As will be shown, the charge carrier mobility in these long-range ordered molecular systems is limited by chemical impurities rather than by structural inhomogeneities. Time-of-flight spectroscopy on polyacenes purified by zone-refinement does not only show coherent carrier movement for holes but also for electrons, which is rarely observed for compounds that can be purified by sublimation only. Finally, we will present a direct comparison between the chemical species and their amount on the surface and in the volume of tetracene crystals. The significantly higher impurity concentration at the surfaces is relevant for the mobility estimated by field-effect transistor (FET) studies on single crystals in planar-geometry. (c) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.