Large magnetoresistance at room temperature in semiconducting polymer sandwich devices

We report on the discovery of a large, room temperature magnetoresistance (MR) effect in polyfluorene sandwich devices in weak magnetic fields. We characterize this effect and discuss its dependence on field direction, voltage, temperature, film thickness, electrode materials, and (unintentional) impurity concentration. Negative MR is usually observed, but positive MR can also be achieved under high applied electric fields. The MR effect reaches up to 10% at fields of 10 mT at room temperature. The effect shows only a weak temperature dependence and is independent of the sign and direction of the magnetic field. We find that the effect is related to the hole current in the devices. To the best of our knowledge, the discovered effect is not adequately described by any of the MR mechanisms known to date.