Charge carriers' trapping states in pentacene films studied by modulated photocurrent

Abstract

The modulated photocurrent (MPC) technique is employed to study the charge carriers' trapping states of pentacene films. The characteristics of the experimental MPC spectra were found to be compatible with trapping-detrapping process of holes in gap states in which their occupancy can be modified by the bias illumination. A demarcation energy level separating empty from partially occupied traps was deduced from the MPC spectra, which can be used to monitor bias-light induced changes in the quasi Fermi level. An exponential trap distribution from structural disorder and a deep metastable gaussian trap distribution from adsorbed environmental impurities were extracted by means of the MPC spectroscopy. An attempt to escape frequency of the order of 1010s−1 was deduced for the gap sates. The derived trap distributions agree with those found before by means of other techniques. The present results indicate that the MPC technique can be used as a valuable tool for pentacene films characterization since it can be also applied to field effect samples.