Influences of self-assembled structure on mobilities of charge carriers in π-conjugated polymers

Mobilities of charge carriers in cast and spun films of poly(3-hexylthiophene)s (PHTs) with regioregularities of 97%, 81%, 70%, and 54% (denoted as PHT97%, PHT81%, PHT70%, and PHT54%, respectively) are evaluated as a function of doping level. A common feature of mobility vs doping level plots for all the PHT films is that the mobility decreases initially with the increase of the doping level and then starts to rise drastically at ca. 1% doping level. No large mobility difference is observed between cast and spun films of each PHT. In contrast, the difference in regioregularity of PHT resulted in a large mobility difference, especially in the low doping regime. At the highest doping levels of ca. 20%, the apparent mobility values reach 0.4 and 0.01 cm(2) V-1 s(-1) for the cast films of PHT97% and PHT54%, respectively. These features of the mobility plots are discussed in connection with self-assembled structures of PHT films studied by electrochemical, in-situ ESR, in-situ UV-vis-NIR, and X-ray diffraction measurements. It is concluded first that mobilities of polarons are mainly controlled by the rate of an interchain charge hopping and second that the evolution of metallic conduction featured by the sharp mobility increase is irrelevant to the interchain stacking, or rather governed by an intrachain route.