title: Conductivity in organic semiconductors hybridized with the vacuum field.
abstract: Much effort over the past decades has been focused on improving carrier mobility in organic thin-film transistors by optimizing the organization of the material or the device architecture. Here we take a different path to solving this problem, by injecting carriers into states that are hybridized to the vacuum electromagnetic field. To test this idea, organic semiconductors were strongly coupled to plasmonic modes to form coherent states that can extend over as many as 10(5) molecules and should thereby favour conductivity. Experiments show that indeed the current does increase by an order of magnitude at resonance in the coupled state, reflecting mostly a change in field-effect mobility. A theoretical quantum model confirms the delocalization of the wavefunctions of the hybridized states and its effect on the conductivity. Our findings illustrate the potential of engineering the vacuum electromagnetic environment to modify and to improve properties of materials.
authors.affiliation: ISIS &icFRC, Université de Strasbourg and CNRS, 67000 Strasbourg, France.
authors.forename: E
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Orgiu
authors.affiliation: ISIS &icFRC, Université de Strasbourg and CNRS, 67000 Strasbourg, France.
authors.forename: J
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: George
authors.affiliation: ISIS &icFRC, Université de Strasbourg and CNRS, 67000 Strasbourg, France.
authors.forename: J A
authors.initials: JA
authors.lastname: Hutchison
authors.affiliation: ISIS &icFRC, Université de Strasbourg and CNRS, 67000 Strasbourg, France.
authors.forename: E
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Devaux
authors.affiliation: IPCMS &icFRC, Université de Strasbourg and CNRS, 67034 Strasbourg, France.
authors.forename: J F
authors.initials: JF
authors.lastname: Dayen
authors.affiliation: IPCMS &icFRC, Université de Strasbourg and CNRS, 67034 Strasbourg, France.
authors.forename: B
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Doudin
authors.affiliation: EPFL, STI SMX-GE MXG 030 Station 12, CH-1015 Lausanne, Switzerland.
authors.forename: F
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Stellacci
authors.affiliation: ISIS &icFRC, Université de Strasbourg and CNRS, 67000 Strasbourg, France.
authors.forename: C
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Genet
authors.affiliation: JILA, NIST, Department of Physics, University of Colorado, 440 UCB, Boulder, Colorado 80309, USA.
authors.forename: J
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Schachenmayer
authors.affiliation: Institut für Theoretische Physik, Universität Innsbruck, Technikerstrasse 25 A-6020 Innsbruck, Austria.
authors.forename: C
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Genes
authors.affiliation: ISIS &icFRC, Université de Strasbourg and CNRS, 67000 Strasbourg, France.|IPCMS &icFRC, Université de Strasbourg and CNRS, 67034 Strasbourg, France.
authors.forename: G
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Pupillo
authors.affiliation: ISIS &icFRC, Université de Strasbourg and CNRS, 67000 Strasbourg, France.
authors.forename: P
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Samorì
authors.affiliation: ISIS &icFRC, Université de Strasbourg and CNRS, 67000 Strasbourg, France.
authors.forename: T W
authors.initials: TW
authors.lastname: Ebbesen