Charge Migration in Organic Materials: Can Propagating Charges Affect the Key Physical Quantities Controlling Their Motion?

Investigating a Combined Stochastic Nucleation and Molecular Dynamics-Based Equilibration Approach for Constructing Large-Scale Polycrystalline Films

The morphology of small-molecule organic semiconducting materials can vary from single crystals via polycrystalline films with varying grain sizes to amorphous structures, depending on the process conditions. This structural variety affects the electronic properties and, thus, the performance of organic electronic devices. A nucleation-equilibration approach is investigated, whose focus is on the construction of morphologies with controlled variations in the average grain size. Its computational requirements are low because nucleation is purely based on geometrical considerations, thus allowing the construction of model systems of experimentally relevant sizes. Its application is demonstrated for C₆₀ and pentacene by generating single-component films that vary from amorphous to crystalline structures. It is further generalized to two-component films and applied to C₆₀: pentacene blends as well as dilute n-doped C₆₀ structures. When combined with electronic structure calculations in the future, the nucleation-equilibration approach can offer insights into the impact of polycrystallinity on electronic and charge-transport properties in the absence of any knowledge about the growth mechanism and for a broad set of systems.

The Dynamics of Hole Transfer in DNA

High-energy radiation and oxidizing agents can ionize DNA. One electron oxidation gives rise to a radical cation whose charge (hole) can migrate through DNA covering several hundreds of Å, eventually leading to irreversible oxidative damage and consequent disease. Understanding the thermodynamic, kinetic and chemical aspects of the hole transport in DNA is important not only for its biological consequences, but also for assessing the properties of DNA in redox sensing or labeling. Furthermore, due to hole migration, DNA could potentially play an important role in nanoelectronics, by acting as both a template and active component. Herein, we review our work on the dynamics of hole transfer in DNA carried out in the last decade. After retrieving the thermodynamic parameters needed to address the dynamics of hole transfer by voltammetric and spectroscopic experiments and quantum chemical computations, we develop a theoretical methodology which allows for a faithful interpretation of the kinetics of the hole transport in DNA and is also capable of taking into account sequence-specific effects.