Crystal structure and orientation of organic semiconductor thin films by microcrystal electron diffraction and grazing-incidence wide-angle X-ray scattering

Andrew M Levine; Guanhong Bu; Sankarsan Biswas; Esther H R Tsai; Adam B Braunschweig; Brent L Nannenga

doi:10.1039/d0cc00119h

Crystal structure and orientation of organic semiconductor thin films by microcrystal electron diffraction and grazing-incidence wide-angle X-ray scattering

Chem Commun (Camb). 2020 Apr 14;56(30):4204-4207. doi: 10.1039/d0cc00119h.

Authors

Andrew M Levine¹, Guanhong Bu², Sankarsan Biswas¹, Esther H R Tsai³, Adam B Braunschweig¹, Brent L Nannenga²

Affiliations

¹ Nanoscience Initiative, Advanced Science Research Center, Graduate Center, City University of New York, 85 St. Nicholas Terrace, New York, NY 10031, USA. abraunschweig@gc.cuny.edu and Department of Chemistry, Hunter College, 695 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10065, USA and Ph.D. Program in Chemistry, The Graduate Center of the City University of New York, New York, NY 10016, USA.
² Chemical Engineering, School for Engineering of Matter, Transport, and Energy, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ 85287, USA. brent.nannenga@asu.edu and Center for Applied Structural Discovery, The Biodesign Institute, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ 85287, USA.
³ Center for Functional Nanomaterials, Brookhaven National Laboratory, Upton, NY 11973, USA. etsai@bnl.gov.

PMID: 32167510
DOI: 10.1039/d0cc00119h

Abstract

We use microcrystal electron diffraction (MicroED) to determine structures of three organic semiconductors, and show that these structures can be used along with grazing-incidence wide-angle X-ray scattering (GIWAXS) to understand crystal packing and orientation in thin films. Together these complimentary techniques provide unique structural insights into organic semiconductor thin films, a class of materials whose device properties and electronic behavior are sensitively dependent on solid-state order.