Charge Transport in Disordered Materials

This chapter surveys general theoretical concepts developed to qualitatively understand and to quantitatively describe the electrical conduction properties of disordered organic and inorganic materials. In particular, these concepts are applied to describe charge transport in amorphous and microcrystalline semiconductors and in conjugated and molecularly doped polymers. Electrical conduction in such systems is achieved through incoherent transitions of charge carriers between spatially localized states. Basic theoretical ideas developed to describe this type of electrical conduction are considered in detail. Particular attention is given to the way the kinetic coefficients depend on temperature, the concentration of localized states, the strength of the applied electric field, and the charge carrier localization length. Charge transport via delocalized states in disordered systems and the relationships between kinetic coefficients under the nonequilibrium conditions are also briefly reviewed.