Exciton and charge-transfer dynamics in polymer semiconductors
  Organic semiconducting polymers are currently of broad interest as potential low-cost materials for photovoltaic and light-emitting display applications. I will give an overview of our work in developing a consistent quantum dynamical picture of the excited state dynamics underlying the photo-physics. We will also focus upon the quantum relaxation and reogranization dynamics that occur upon photoexcitation of a couple of type II donor-acceptor polymer heterojunction systems. Our results stress the significance of vibrational relaxation in the state-to- state relaxation and the impact of curve crossing between charge- transfer and excitonic states. Furthermore, while a tightly bound charge-transfer state (exciplex) remain the lowest excited state, we show that the regeneration of the optically active lowest excitonic state in TFB:F8BT is possible via the existence of a steady-state involving the bulk charge-transfer state. Finally, we will discuss ramifications of these results to recent experimental studied and the fabrication of efficient polymer LED and photovoltaics. 
Eric R. Bittner and John Glen S. Ramon