The performance of an organic photovoltaic cell depends critically on the mobility of charge carriers within the constituent molecular semiconductor materials. However, a complex combination of phenomena that span a range of length and time scales control charge transport in disordered organic semiconductors. As a result, it is difficult to rationalize charge transport properties in terms of material parameters. Until now, efforts to improve charge mobilities in molecular semiconductors have proceeded largely by trial and error rather than through systematic design. However, recent developments have enabled the first predictive simulation studies of charge transport in disordered organic semiconductors. This Account describes a set of computational methods, specifically molecular modeling methods, to simulate molecular packing, quantum chemical calculations of charge transfer rates, and Monte Carlo simulations of charge transport. Using case studies, we show how this combination of methods can reproduce experimental mobilities with few or no fitting parameters. Although currently applied to material systems of high symmetry or well-defined structure, further developments of this approach could address more complex systems such anisotropic or multicomponent solids and conjugated polymers. Even with an approximate treatment of packing disorder, these computational methods simulate experimental mobilities within an order of magnitude at high electric fields. We can both reproduce the relative values of electron and hole mobility in a conjugated small molecule and rationalize those values based on the symmetry of frontier orbitals. Using fully atomistic molecular dynamics simulations of molecular packing, we can quantitatively replicate vertical charge transport along stacks of discotic liquid crystals which vary only in the structure of their side chains. We can reproduce the trends in mobility with molecular weight for self-organizing polymers using a cheap, coarse-grained structural simulation method. Finally, we quantitatively reproduce the field-effect mobility in disordered C60 films. On the basis of these results, we conclude that all of the necessary building blocks are in place for the predictive simulation of charge transport in macromolecular electronic materials and that such methods can be used as a tool toward the future rational design of functional organic electronic materials.

We present a model of charge transport in organic solids which explicitly considers the packing and electronic structure of individual molecules. We simulate the time-of-flight mobility measurement in crystalline and disordered films of tris(8-hydroxyquinoline) aluminium (Alq(3)). The morphology of disordered Alq(3) is modelled on a molecular scale, and density functional theory is used to determine the electronic couplings between molecules. Without any fitting parameters we predict electron mobilities in the crystalline and disordered phases of approximately 1 and approximately 10(-4) cm(2) V(-1) s(-1), respectively. In good agreement with experiment we find that electron mobilities are two orders of magnitude greater than those of holes. We explain this difference in terms of the spatial extent of the frontier orbitals. Our results suggest that charge transport in disordered Alq(3) is dominated by a few highly conducting pathways.

We present a model of polycrystalline C60 field-effect transistors (FETs) that incorporates the microscopic structural and electronic details of the C60 films. We generate disordered polycrystalline thin films by simulating the physical-vapor deposition process. We simulate electron hopping transport using a Monte Carlo method and electronic structure calculations. Our model reproduces experimentally observed FET characteristics, including electrical characteristics, electrochemical potentials, and charge mobilities. Our results suggest that even relatively disordered films have charge mobilities that are only a factor of 2 smaller than mobilities in single crystals.

We calculate the effect of vibronic coupling on the charge transport parameters in crystalline naphthalene, between 0 and 400 K. We find that nuclear fluctuations can cause large changes in both the energy of a charge on a molecule and on the electronic coupling between molecules. As a result, nuclear fluctuations cause wide distributions of both energies and couplings. We show that these distributions have a small temperature dependence and that, even at high temperatures, vibronic coupling is dominated by the effect of zero-point fluctuations. Because of the importance of zero-point fluctuations, we find that the distributions of energies and couplings have substantial width, even at 0 K. Furthermore, vibronic coupling with high energy modes may be significant, even though these modes are never thermally activated. Our results have implications for the temperature dependence of charge mobilities in organic semiconductors.

We present a model of charge transport in polycrystalline electronic films, which considers details of the microscopic scale while simultaneously allowing realistically sized films to be simulated. We discuss the approximations and assumptions made by the model, and rationalize its application to thin films of directionally crystallized poly(3-hexylthiophene). In conjunction with experimental data, we use the model to characterize the effects of defects in these films. Our findings support the hypothesis that it is the directional crystallization of these films, rather than their defects, which causes anisotropic mobilities. V