Frequency Dependent Properties of Tris(8-Hydroxyquinoline) Aluminum Thin Films

Admittance or impedance spectroscopy is one of the powerful tools to study dielectric relaxation and loss processes in organic and inorganic materials. In this study, the frequency dependent properties of an indium tin oxide/tris(8-hydroxyquinoline) aluminum($Alq_3$)/aluminum structure have been studied. The conductance of the $Alq_3$ film increases with the DC applied voltage up to 4V and decreases above 4V in the low frequency region. This indicates that the resistance of the device decreases with the applied bias due to the carrier injection enhancement, thereafter the injected carriers form the space charge and the additional injection of carriers is prevented. The Cole-Cole plot of the admittance takes a one-semicircle shape, which means that the device can be modeled as a parallel resistor-capacitor network. The resistance and capacitance were estimated as 8.62k${\Omega}$ and 2.7nF, respectively, at 3V in the low frequency region. The dielectric constant ( ${\epsilon}'$ ) of the $Alq_3$ film is independent of the frequency in the low frequency region below 100kHz, while the frequency dependency was observed at above 100kHz. The dielectric loss factor ( ${\epsilon}"$ ) of the $Alq_3$ film shows the dielectric dispersion below 100kHz and dielectric absorption in higher frequency domain. The dispersion is thought to be related to the hopping process of the carriers. The ${\epsilon}"$ is proportional to the reciprocal of the frequency. The dielectric relaxation time was extracted to about 0.318${\mu}s$ from the dielectric absorption spectrum.