Abstract
We investigate theoretically charge delocalization in radical-cations, i.e., positive polarons, formed on oligomer chains of poly(2,5-bis(3-alkylthiophene-2-yl)thieno[3,2-b]thiophene), PBTTT. We use non-empirically tuned range-separated density functionals (TRS-DFT), including LC-ωPBE, LC-BLYP, and ωB97XD. We consider the evolution with oligomer length of the molecular geometric and electronic structures, optical absorption features, and spin densities. The TRS-DFT results indicate that a positive polaron can delocalize ideally over some 10 thiophene rings when the backbone is non-planar and up to 14 rings for a backbone forced to be completely planar. Interestingly, up to six polarons can co-exist side-by-side in a hexamer (which contains 24 thiophene rings), which is consistent with the highest degrees of doping (oxidation) experimentally achievable in polythiophene derivatives.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 9671-9677 |
| Number of pages | 7 |
| Journal | The Journal of Physical Chemistry C |
| Volume | 120 |
| Issue number | 18 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - May 4 2016 |
Bibliographical note
KAUST Repository Item: Exported on 2020-10-01Acknowledgements: This work has been supported by King Abdullah University of Science and Technology
(KAUST). We acknowledge the KAUST IT Research Computing Team for providing
computational and storage resources and thank Dr. Cheng Zhong, Dr. Haitao Sun, and Dr.
Bradley D. Rose for stimulating discussions.