Effect of Intra-molecular Disorder and Inter-molecular Electronic Interactions on the Electronic Structure of Poly-p-Phenylene Vinylene (PPV)

We investigate the role of intra-molecular conformational disorder and inter-molecular electronic interactions on the electronic structure of disorder clusters of poly-p-phenylene vinylene (PPV) oligomers. Classical molecular dynamics is used to determine probable molecular geometries, and first-principle density functional theory (DFT) calculations are used to determine electronic structure. Intra-molecular and inter-molecular effects are disentangled by contrasting results for densely packed oligomer clusters with those for ensembles of isolated oligomers with the same intra-molecular geometries. We find that electron trap states are induced primarily by intra-molecular configuration disorder, while the hole trap states are generated primarily from inter-molecular electronic interactions.