Conducting polymers have become standard engineering materials, used in manyelectronic devices. Despite this, there is a lack of understanding of the microscopicorigin of the conducting properties, especially at realistic device field strengths. Wepresent simulations of doped poly(p-phenylene) (PPP) using a Su-Schrieffer-Heeger(SSH) tight-binding model, with the electric field included in the Hamiltonian througha time-dependent vector potential via Peierls substitution of the phase factor. We findthat polarons typically break down within less than a picosecond after the field hasbeen switched on, already for electric fields as low as around 1.6 mV/{\AA}. This is a fieldstrength common in many flexible organic electronic devices. Our results challenge therelevance of the polaron as charge carrier in conducting polymers for a wide range ofapplications.
@article{arxiv.1704.08519,
title = {Breakdown of Polarons in Conducting Polymers at Device Field Strengths},
author = {M. R. Mahani and A. Mirsakiyeva and Anna Delin},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1704.08519},
year = {2017}
}