Polaron formation and symmetry breaking

Polaron Induced Conductance Switching in Conjugated Oligophenylene: A First-Principles Analysis

For π-conjugated systems, polaron formation has a major impact on their optoelectronic properties. In fact, for such systems, an exquisite interplay between electron delocalization and the steric effect determines their ground state properties. However, an excess charge (positive or negative) injection causes structural reorientation because of extended conjugation. Herein, we investigate the effect of such an excess charge in an individual polyphenylene on its quantum conductance behavior. By combining the DFT and NEGF formalisms, we characterize both structural and electronic changes occurring upon electron and hole injection. We demonstrate that for both the cationic and anionic radicals, the excess charge is observed to be localized, inducing a partial planarization of the molecule and forming cationic and anionic polarons, respectively. The calculated low-bias conductance values determine the polaronic effect and could be implemented for easy determination and measurement of polaron formation. In fact, cationic and anionic polarons induce a large degree of conductance switching, involving a decrease and increase of conductance, respectively.

Operando Characterization of Organic Mixed Ionic/Electronic Conducting Materials

Operando characterization plays an important role in revealing the structure-property relationships of organic mixed ionic/electronic conductors (OMIECs), enabling the direct observation of dynamic changes during device operation and thus guiding the development of new materials. This review focuses on the application of different operando characterization techniques in the study of OMIECs, highlighting the time-dependent and bias-dependent structure, composition, and morphology information extracted from these techniques. We first illustrate the needs, requirements, and challenges of operando characterization then provide an overview of relevant experimental techniques, including spectroscopy, scattering, microbalance, microprobe, and electron microscopy. We also compare different in silico methods and discuss the interplay of these computational methods with experimental techniques. Finally, we provide an outlook on the future development of operando for OMIEC-based devices and look toward multimodal operando techniques for more comprehensive and accurate description of OMIECs.

Imaging Charge Localization in a Conjugated Oligophenylene

Polaron formation in conjugated polymers has a major impact on their optical and electronic properties. In polyphenylene, the molecular conformation is determined by a delicate interplay between electron delocalization and steric effects. Injection of excess charges is expected to increase the degree of conjugation, leading to structural distortions of the chain. Here we investigated at the single-molecule level the role of an excess charge in an individual oligophenylene deposited on sodium chloride films. By combining sub-molecular-resolved atomic force microscopy with redox-state-selective orbital imaging, we characterize both structural and electronical changes occurring upon hole injection. While the neutral molecule exhibits a delocalized frontier orbital, for the cationic radical the excess charge is observed to localize, inducing a partial planarization of the molecule. These results provide direct evidence for self-trapping of the excess charge in oligophenylenes, shedding light on the interplay of charge localization and structural distortion.

Cation Alloying Delocalizes Polarons in Lead Halide Perovskites

Recently, mixed-cation perovskites have promised enhanced performances concerning stability and efficiency in optoelectronic devices. Here, we report a systematic study on the effects of cation alloying on polaronic properties in cation-alloyed perovskites using first principle calculations. We find that cation alloying significantly reduces the polaron binding energies for both electrons and holes compared to pure methylammonium lead iodide (MAPbI₃). This is rationalized in terms of crystal symmetry reduction that causes polarons to be more delocalized. Electron polarons undergo large Jahn-Teller distortions (∼15-30%), whereas hole polarons tend to shrink the lattice by ∼5%. Such different lattice distortion footprints could be utilized to distinguish the type of polarons. Finally, our simulations show that Cs, formamidinium (FA), and MA mixtures can effectively minimize polaron binding energy while weakly affecting band gap, in a good agreement with experimental findings. These modeling results can guide future development of halide perovskite materials compositions for optoelectronic applications.

Geometry Distortion and Small Polaron Binding Energy Changes with Ionic Substitution in Halide Perovskites

Halide perovskites have demonstrated remarkable performance in optoelectronic applications. Despite extraordinary progress, questions remain about device stability. We report an in-depth computational study of small polaron formation, electronic structure, charge density, and reorganization energies of several experimentally relevant halide perovskites using isolated clusters. Local lattice symmetry, electronic structure, and electron-phonon coupling are interrelated in polaron formation in these materials. To illustrate this, first-principles calculations are performed on (MA/Cs/FA)Pb(I/Br)₃ and MASnI₃. Across the materials studied, electron small polaron formation is manifested by Jahn-Teller-like distortions in the central octahedron, with apical PbI bonds expanding significantly more than the equatorial bonds. In contrast, hole polarons cause the central octahedron to uniformly contract. This difference in manifestation of electron and hole polaron formation can be a tool to determine what is taking place in individual systems to systematically control performance. Other trends as the anion and cations are changed are established for optimization in specific optoelectronic applications.

Controlling bending and twisting of conjugated polymers via solitons

A strong generic coupling between self-localized solitons and conformations of a pi-conjugated polymer chain is demonstrated through ab initio calculations and the underlying mechanisms revealed by using an extended Hubbard model. We show that significant chain bending and twisting of trans- and cis-polyacetylene result from torque imbalances among atom-centered orbitals and the steric instability at single-bond cis-centers, respectively. The soliton-induced conformational effects create sufficient strains to provide an intrinsic high-strain-rate actuation mechanism in optical excitation processes.

Electronic correlations in oligo-acene and -thiopene organic molecular crystals

From first-principles calculations we determine the Coulomb interaction between two holes on oligo-acene and -thiophene molecules in a crystal, as a function of the oligomer length. The electronic polarization of the molecules that surround the charged oligomer reduces the bare Coulomb repulsion between the holes by approximately a factor of 2. The effects of relaxing the molecular geometry in the presence of holes is found to be significantly smaller. In all cases the effective hole-hole repulsion is much larger than the valence bandwidth, which implies that at high doping levels the properties of these organic semiconductors are determined by electron-electron correlations.

Optical properties of singly charged conjugated oligomers: A coupled-cluster equation of motion study

We have implemented a coupled-cluster equation of motion approach combined with the intermediate neglect of differential overlap parametrization and applied it to study the excited states and optical absorptions in positively and negatively charged conjugated oligomers. The method is found to be both reliable and efficient. The theoretical results are in very good agreement with experiments and confirm that there appear two subgap absorption peaks upon polaron formation. Interestingly, the relative intensities of the polaron-induced subgap absorptions can be related to the extent of the lattice geometry relaxations.