The mechanism and the nature of the species formed by molecular doping of the model polymer poly(3hexylthiophene) (P3HT) in its regioregular (rre-) and regiorandom (rra-) forms in solution are investigated for three different dopants: the prototypical π-electron acceptor 2,3,5,6-tetrafluoro-7,7,8,8-tetracyanoquinodimethane (F 4 TCNQ), the strong Lewis acid tris(pentafluorophenyl)borane (BCF), and the strongly oxidizing complex molybdenum tris[1-(methoxycarbonyl)-2-(trifluoromethyl)ethane-1,2-dithiolene] (Mo(tfd-CO 2 Me) 3 ). In a combined optical and electron paramagnetic resonance study, we show that the doping of rreP3HT in solution occurs by integer charge transfer, resulting in formation of P3HT radical cations (polarons) for all of the dopants considered here. Remarkably, despite the different chemical nature of the dopants and dopant−polymer interaction, the formed polarons exhibit essentially identical optical absorption spectra. The situation is very different for the doping of rraP3HT, where we observe formation of a charge-transfer complex with F 4 TCNQ and of a "localized" P3HT polaron on nonaggregated chains upon doping with BCF, while there is no indication of dopant-induced species in the case of Mo(tfd-CO 2 Me) 3 . We estimate the ionization efficiency of the respective dopants for the two polymers in solution and report the molar extinction coefficient spectra of the three different species. Finally, we observe increased spin delocalization in regioregular compared to regiorandom P3HT by electron nuclear double resonance, suggesting that the ability of the charge to delocalize on aggregates of planarized polymer backbones plays a significant role in determining the doping mechanism.

We investigate from first-principles many-body theory the role of the donor conjugation length in doped organic semiconductors forming charge-transfer complexes (CTCs) exhibiting partial charge transfer. We consider oligothiophenes (nT) with an even number of rings ranging from four to ten, doped by the strong acceptor 2,3,5,6tetrafluoro-7,7,8,8-tetracyano-quinodimethane (F4TCNQ). The decrease of the electronic gaps upon increasing nT size is driven by the reduction of the ionization energy with the electron affinity remaining almost constant. The optical gaps exhibit a different trend, being at approximately the same energy regardless of the donor length. The first excitation retains the same oscillator strength and Frenkel-like character in all systems. While in 4T-F4TCNQ also higher-energy excitations preserve this nature, in CTCs with longer nT oligomers charge-transfer excitations and Frenkel excitons localized on the donor appear above the absorption onset. Our results offer important insight into the structure-property relations of CTCs, thus contributing to a deeper understanding of doped organic semiconductors.

For molecularly doped poly(3-hexyl-thiophene) solvated individual chains can be unambiguously differentiated from aggregated ones by diagnostic polaron absorption.

Local interface structures affect the ab initio modelling of the electronic and optical properties of doped organic semiconductors.

Magnetic properties of a single vacancy in graphene is a relevant and still unsolved problem.The experimental results point to a clearly detectable magnetic defect state at the Fermi energy, while several calculations based on density functional theory (DFT) yield widely varying results for the magnetic moment, in the range of µ = 1.04 − 2.0 µ B . We present a multi-tool ab initio theoretical study of the same defect, using two simulation protocols for a defect in a crystal (cluster and periodic boundary conditions) and different DFT functionals -bare and hybrid DFT, mixing a fraction of exact Hartree-Fock exchange (XC). Our main conclusions are two-fold: First, we find that due to the π-character of the Fermi-energy states of graphene, inclusion of XC is crucial and for a single isolated vacancy we can predict an integer magnetic moment µ = 2µ B . Second, we find that due to the specific symmetry of the graphene lattice, periodic arrays of single vacancies may provide interesting diffuse spin-spin interactions.

Real-time time-dependent density functional theory, in conjunction with the Ehrenfest molecular dynamics scheme, is becoming a popular methodology to investigate ultrafast phenomena on the nanoscale. Thanks to recent developments, it is also possible to explicitly include in the simulations a time-dependent laser pulse, thereby accessing the transient excitation regime. However, the complexity entailed in these calculations calls for in-depth analysis of the accessible and yet approximate (either “dressed” or “bare”) quantities in order to evaluate their ability to provide us with a realistic picture of the simulated processes. In this work, we analyze the ultrafast dynamics of three small molecules (ethylene, benzene, and thiophene) excited by a resonant laser pulse in the framework of the adiabatic local-density approximation. The electronic response to the laser perturbation in terms of induced dipole moment and excited-state population is compared to the results given by an exactly solvable two-level model. In this way, we can interpret the charge-carrier dynamics in terms of simple estimators, such as the number of excited electrons. From the computed transient absorption spectra, we unravel the appearance of nonlinear effects such as excited-state absorption and vibronic coupling. In this way, we observe that the laser excitation affects the vibrational spectrum by enhancing the anharmonicities therein, while the coherent vibrational motion contributes to stabilizing the electronic excitation already within a few tens of femtoseconds.

Organic charge transfer complexes (CTCs) with near-infrared absorption received growing interest in the past years, but the details of their photophysics, especially in thin films, remain largely unknown. We combined experimental and computational methods to thoroughly investigate and compare CTCs formed by tetracene with 2,2′-(perfluoronaphthalene-2,6diylidene)dimalononitrile and 2,3,5,6-tetrafluoro-7,7,8,8,-tetracyanoquinodimethane, respectively. Using ultrafast transient absorption spectroscopy, the photophysics of these small bandgap CTCs was revealed, which is dominated by a sub-picosecond relaxation of the excitons back to the ground state. In equimolar blends, tetracene singlet fission is suppressed while in blends with excess of tetracene reduced lifetimes of tetracene, singlet and triplet excitons were found.

The ORCID identification number(s) for the author(s) of this article can be found under https://doi.org/10.1002/pssb.202100359.