Theoretical and Experimental Investigation of Barrier-Energy-Dependent Charge Injection Mechanisms in Organic Photodetectors

Charge injection is known as the major source of dark current under an applied reverse bias, which directly influences the performance of organic photodetectors with diode architecture. However, it is unclear which of various contributions, such as electron flow through the junction, shunt leakage, thermionic emission, and tunnelling, are dominant. This study investigates the thermionic emission and tunneling models to describe the origin of experimentally measured dark current generated in an organic photodetector. To elucidate the dominant mechanism, the barrier energies at anodic contacts are set from 0.6 to 1.0 eV using photosensitive layers composed of different acceptors. A linear relation is found between the natural logarithm of the dark current density under reverse bias and the square root of the barrier height, which strongly suggests direct tunneling as dominant mechanism for dark current injection. This conclusion is strengthened by temperature dependent dark current analysis. Further knowledge of the dominant mechanism by charge injection can help devise an effective strategy to suppress dark current for effective organic photodetector device implementation.