Investigation of electrical properties (ac and dc) of organic zinc phthalocyanine, ZnPc, semiconductor thin films

We report measurements on the electrical properties of thermally evaporated zinc phthalocyanine, ZnPc, semiconductor thin films. Aluminum and gold metal electrodes were used and both proved to act as ohmic contacts. A relative permittivity, εr, of 1.56 was estimated from the dependence of capacitance on film thickness. The room temperature current density–voltage measurements indicated an ohmic conduction at low voltages, while a space–charge-limited conduction at higher voltages. An average value of a thermally generated hole concentration of the order 1013 m−3 was estimated at room temperature. conductivity, capacitance and loss tangent were measured over a wide range of temperature (from 170 to 430 K) and frequency (between 0.1 and 20 kHz). The ac conductivity of ZnPc films was observed to be proportional to ωs, where ω is the angular frequency, and the index s is a temperature and frequency-dependent constant. At low temperatures and for higher frequencies the ac conduction was due to hopping. The capacitance, as well as the loss tangent, was found to be dependent on both temperature and frequency, but was constant for all frequencies at low temperatures. Such dependences were accounted for the equivalent-circuit model consisting of inherent capacitance in parallel with a temperature dependent resistive element.