English

Singlet exciton optics and phonon-mediated dynamics in oligoacene semiconductor crystals

Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics 2022-09-13 v1

Abstract

Organic semiconductor crystals stand out as an efficient, cheap and diverse platform for realising optoelectronic applications. The optical response of these crystals is governed by a rich tapestry of exciton physics. So far, little is known on the phonon-driven singlet exciton dynamics in this class of materials. In this joint theory-experiment work, we combine the fabrication of a high-quality oligoacene semiconductor crystal and characterization via photoluminescence measurements with a sophisticated approach to the microscopic modeling in these crystals. This allows us to investigate singlet exciton optics and dynamics. We predict phonon-bottleneck effects in pentacene crystals, where we find dark excitons acting as crucial phonon-mediated relaxation scattering channels. While the efficient singlet fission in pentacene crystals hampers the experimental observation of this bottleneck effect, we reveal both in theory and experiment a distinct polarisation- and temperature-dependence in absorption and photoluminescence spectra of tetracene crystals, including microscopic origin of exciton linewidths, the activation of the higher Davydov states at large temperatures, and polarisation-dependent quenching of specific exciton resonances. Our joint theory-experiment study represents a significant advance in microscopic understanding of singlet exciton optics and dynamics in oligoacene crystals.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2209.05174,
  title  = {Singlet exciton optics and phonon-mediated dynamics in oligoacene semiconductor crystals},
  author = {Joshua J. P. Thompson and Dominik Muth and Sebastian Anhäuser and Daniel Bischof and Marina Gerhard and Gregor Witte and Ermin Malic},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2209.05174},
  year   = {2022}
}