Polaronic Tunnelling in Organic Triblock Copolymers

Polaron tunnelling is studied in xPA/nPPP/xPA (PA for polyacetylene and PPP poly (p-phenylene)) triblock copolymer, which has a well–barrier–well structure. An extended tight-binding Hamiltonian including external electric field is adopted. Without electric field, the injected electrons would not extend over the whole copolymer chain but instead be confined in the segments of PA. This is different from the behaviour of the traditional semiconductors. It is found that the polaron can transfer to the potential barrier-PPP segment when the applied electric field reaches a certain value. The critical polaron tunnelling electric fields depend upon the lengths of PPP segments.