Self-Aligned Growth of Organic Semiconductor Single Crystals by Electric Field.

We proposed a novel but facile method for growing organic semiconductor single-crystals via solvent vapor annealing (SVA) under electric field. In the conventional SVA growth process, nuclei of crystals appeared anywhere on the substrate and their crystallographic axes were randomly distributed. We applied electric field during the SVA growth of 2,7-dioctyl[1]benzothieno[3,2-b][1]benzothiophene (C8-BTBT) on the SiO2/Si substrate on which a pair of electrodes had been deposited beforehand.

Electric-field-assisted position and orientation control of organic single crystals.

We have investigated the motion of growing pentacene single crystals in solution under various electric fields. The pentacene single crystals in 1,2,4-trichlorobenzene responded to the electric field as if they were positively charged. By optimizing the strength and frequency of an alternating electric field, the pentacene crystals automatically bridged the electrodes on SiO2.