Photoconductivity in Discotic Liquid Crystals: A New Class of High-Mobility Materials

Abstract Using a time-of-flight technique, different transport mechanisms, deep trapping, multiple shallow trapping and Gaussian transport, can be observed in the different temperature and phase regions of the liquidcrystalline (LC) photoconductor hexapentyloxytriphenylene (HPT). Transient photocurrents and carrier mobilities for various temperatures, electric fields, and sample histories were examined. The ideal intrinsic Gaussian transport, observed for holes in the mesophase, puts HPT into a new class of highmobility materials with both hole mobilities on the order of 1.10−3cm2/Vs and a steplike current decay. These features result from the fact that there is obviously neither a position…