The mechanism and magnitude of the in‐plane conductivity of poly(3,4‐ethy‐lenedioxythiophene):poly(styrenesulfonate) (PEDOT:PSS) thin films is determined using temperature dependent conductivity measurements for various PEDOT:PSS weight ratios with and without a high boiling solvent (HBS). Without the HBS the in‐plane conductivity of PEDOT:PSS is lower and for all studied weight ratios well described by the relation $ \sigma = \sigma _0 {\rm exp}[- \left({{{{T_0}}\over{T}}} \right)^{0.5}] $ with T0 a characteristic temperature. The exponent 0.5 indicates quasi‐one dimensional (quasi‐1D) variable range hopping (VRH). The conductivity prefactor σ0 varies over three orders of magnitudes and follows a power law σ0∝c3.5PEDOT with cPEDOT the weight fraction of PEDOT in PEDOT:PSS. The field dependent conductivity is consistent with quasi‐1D VRH. Combined, these observations suggest that conductance takes place via a percolating network of quasi‐1D filaments. Using transmission electron microscopy (TEM) filamentary structures are observed in vitrified dispersions and dried films. For PEDOT:PSS films with HBS, the conductivity also exhibits quasi‐1D VRH behavior when the temperature is less than 200 K. The low characteristic temperature T0 indicates that HBS‐treated films are close to the critical regime between a metal and an insulator. In this case, the conductivity prefactor scales linearly with cPEDOT, indicating the conduction is no longer limited by a percolation of filaments. The lack of observable changes in TEM upon processing with the HBS suggests that the changes in conductivity are due to a smaller spread in the conductivities of individual filaments, or a higher probability for neighboring filaments to be connected rather than being caused by major morphological modification of the material.
We have measured the elastic and inelastic tunnelling properties of epitaxial graphene on SiC(0001) using cryogenic scanning tunnelling spectroscopy. We find that the dominant inelastic channel of the out-of-plane acoustic graphene phonon at 70 mV is spatially localized to particular regions of the graphene-SiC system that contain localized states. At these locations the maximum inelastic tunnelling channel reaches up to half of the total tunnelling current. The local enhancement of the inelastic tunnelling is found at the localized electron states of the graphene/SiC interface layer. Nonequilibrium Green's function formalism theory calculations indicate that this intense inelastic channel arises from graphene phonon modes strongly coupled to narrow electron states.
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