Oscillatory Regularity in the Energy Spectrum of Traps in Ordered Media. I. Experimental Methods and Results (Review)

The article presents the results of the author's research into the energy spectra of traps in over 30 ordered materials -including metal oxide crystals, halide perovskites, alkali halide crystals, and specific types of polymers -using an improved fractional thermoluminescence (FTL) method.The trap energies exhibit oscillatory regularities described by E=ћωTL(n+1/2), where, in most cases, ωTL coincides with the frequencies of the Raman spectrum lines.Depending on the crystal structure, we observed one to five oscillatory series.The oscillator regularities in trap energies are attributed to the polaron nature of the charge carriers.We propose a polaron model of traps in inorganic crystals and a one-dimensional (1D) trap model for organic linear conjugated polymers.Part I describes thermoluminescence methods for investigating trap energy spectra, presents the experimental results, and formulates the polaron trap model.