Beneath the disorder: Unraveling the impacts of doping on organic electronics and thermoelectrics

Organic materials have found widespread applications but require doping to overcome their intrinsically low carrier concentration. Doping injects free carriers into the polymer, moving the position of the Fermi level, and creates coulombic traps, changing the shape of the electronic density of states (DOS). We develop equations to explicitly map the DOS parameters to the Seebeck vs conductivity relationship. At low carrier concentrations, this relationship is a universal slope \(-{k}_{B}/q\), while at higher carrier concentrations, the slope becomes dependent on the shape of the DOS. We conclude that, at high doping, a heavy-tailed DOS leads to higher thermoelectric power factors.

Graphical abstract