Journal
NANO LETTERS
Volume 17, Issue 9, Pages 5848-5854Publisher
AMER CHEMICAL SOC
DOI: 10.1021/acs.nanolett.7b03118
Keywords
Ratchet; Brownian motor; nonequilibrium; charge transport; organic semiconductor; temporal modulation
Categories
Funding
- Center for Bio-Inspired Energy Science, an Energy Frontier Research Center - U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Basic Energy Sciences [DE-SC0000989]
- State of Illinois
- Northwestern University
- Materials Processing and Microfabrication Facility at Northwestern University
- MRSEC program of the National Science Foundation [DMR-1121262]
- EPIC
- SPID
- Keck-II facilities of the NUANCE Center at Northwestern
- Soft and Hybrid Nanotechnology Experimental Resource [NSF NNCI-1542205]
- MRSEC program
- International Institute for Nanotechnology (IIN)
- Keck Foundation
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Biological systems utilize a combination of asymmetry, noise, and chemical energy to produce motion in the highly damped environment of the cell with molecular motors, many of which are ratchets, nonequilibrium devices for producing directed transport using nondirectional perturbations without a net bias. The underlying ratchet principle has been implemented in man-made micro- and nanodevices to transport charged particles by oscillating an electric potential with repeating asymmetric features. In this experimental study, the ratcheting of electrons in an organic semiconductor is optimized by tuning the temporal modulation of the oscillating potential, applied using nanostructured electrodes. An analytical model of steady-state carrier dynamics is used to determine that symmetry-breaking motion of carriers through the thickness of the polymer layer enables even temporally unbiased waveforms (e.g., sine) to produce current, an advance that could allow the future use of electromagnetic radiation to power ratchets. The analysis maps the optimal operating frequency of the ratchet to the mobility of the transport layer and the spatial periodicity of the potential, and relates the dependence on the temporal waveform to the dielectric characteristics and thickness of the layer.
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