However, studies into the conductivity of PEDOT:PSS rarely address the out-of-plane conductivity and those that do, report widely varying results. Here a systematic study of the out-of-plane charge transport in thin fi lms of PEDOT:PSS with varying PSS content is presented. To this end, the PEDOT:PSS is enclosed in small interconnects between metallic contacts. An unexpected, but strong dependence of the conductivity on interconnect diameter is observed for PEDOT:PSS formulations without high boiling solvent. The change in conductivity correlates with a diameter dependent change in PEDOT:PSS layer thickness. It is suggested that the order of magnitude variation in out-of-plane conductivity with only a 3-4-fold layer thickness variation can quantitatively be explained on basis of a percolating cluster model.

We investigate the scalability of the temperature- and electric field-dependence of the conductivity of disordered organic semiconductors to ‘universal’ curves by two different but commonly employed methods; by so-called universal scaling and by using the effective temperature concept. Experimentally both scaling methods were found to be equally applicable to the out-of-plane charge transport in PEDOT:PSS thin films of various compositions. Both methods are shown to be equivalent in terms of functional dependence and to have identical limiting behavior. The experimentally observed scaling behavior can be reproduced by a numerical nearest-neighbor hopping model, accounting for the Coulomb interaction, the high charge carrier concentration and the energetic disorder. The underlying physics can be captured in a simple empirical model, describing the effective temperature of the charge carrier distribution as the outcome of a heat balance between Joule heating and (effective) temperature-dependent energy loss to the lattice.

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