Performance Improvements in Conjugated Polymer Devices by Removal of Water-Induced Traps.

The exploration of a wide range of molecular structures has led to the development of high-performance conjugated polymer semiconductors for flexible electronic applications including displays, sensors, and logic circuits. Nevertheless, many conjugated polymer field-effect transistors (OFETs) exhibit nonideal device characteristics and device instabilities rendering them unfit for industrial applications. These often do not originate in the material's intrinsic molecular structure, but rather in external trap states caused by chemical impurities or environmental species such as water.

Dithiopheneindenofluorene (TIF) Semiconducting Polymers with Very High Mobility in Field-Effect Transistors.

The charge-carrier mobility of organic semiconducting polymers is known to be enhanced when the energetic disorder of the polymer is minimized. Fused, planar aromatic ring structures contribute to reducing the polymer conformational disorder, as demonstrated by polymers containing the indacenodithiophene (IDT) repeat unit, which have both a low Urbach energy and a high mobility in thin-film-transistor (TFT) devices. Expanding on this design motif, copolymers containing the dithiopheneindenofluorene repeat unit are synthesized, which extends the fused aromatic structure with two additional phenyl rings, further rigidifying the polymer backbone.

High operational and environmental stability of high-mobility conjugated polymer field-effect transistors through the use of molecular additives.

Due to their low-temperature processing properties and inherent mechanical flexibility, conjugated polymer field-effect transistors (FETs) are promising candidates for enabling flexible electronic circuits and displays. Much progress has been made on materials performance; however, there remain significant concerns about operational and environmental stability, particularly in the context of applications that require a very high level of threshold voltage stability, such as active-matrix addressing of organic light-emitting diode displays. Here, we investigate the physical mechanisms behind operational and environmental degradation of high-mobility, p-type polymer FETs and demonstrate an effective route to improve device stability.

Operational electrochemical stability of thiophene-thiazole copolymers probed by resonant Raman spectroscopy.

We report on the electrochemical stability of hole polarons in three conjugated polymers probed by resonant Raman spectroscopy. The materials considered are all isostructural to poly(3-hexyl)thiophene, where thiazole units have been included to systematically deepen the energy level of the highest occupied molecular orbital (HOMO). We demonstrate that increasing the thiazole content planarizes the main conjugated backbone of the polymer and improves the electrochemical stability in the ground state.

Chalcogenophene comonomer comparison in small band gap diketopyrrolopyrrole-based conjugated polymers for high-performing field-effect transistors and organic solar cells.

The design, synthesis, and characterization of a series of diketopyrrolopyrrole-based copolymers with different chalcogenophene comonomers (thiophene, selenophene, and tellurophene) for use in field-effect transistors and organic photovoltaic devices are reported. The effect of the heteroatom substitution on the optical, electrochemical, and photovoltaic properties and charge carrier mobilities of these polymers is discussed. The results indicate that by increasing the size of the chalcogen atom (S < Se < Te), polymer band gaps are narrowed mainly due to LUMO energy level stabilization.

Approaching disorder-free transport in high-mobility conjugated polymers.

Conjugated polymers enable the production of flexible semiconductor devices that can be processed from solution at low temperatures. Over the past 25 years, device performance has improved greatly as a wide variety of molecular structures have been studied. However, one major limitation has not been overcome; transport properties in polymer films are still limited by pervasive conformational and energetic disorder.

Polaron stability in semiconducting polymer neat films.

We describe a spectroelectrochemical approach to accelerated electrochemical stability studies of conjugated polymers under oxidative stress. The polaron stabilities of alternating copolymers based on (i) thiophene and thiazole, namely PTTz, and (ii) bithiophene and thiazole, namely PTTTz, are compared in neat films with that of P3HT. P3HT is found to be the most stable whilst PTTz is found to be the least stable.