A nonchlorinated solvent-processed polymer semiconductor for high-performance ambipolar transistors

Jie Yang; Yaqian Jiang; Zhiyuan Zhao; Xueli Yang; Zheye Zhang; Jinyang Chen; Junyu Li; Wei Shi; Shuai Wang; Yunlong Guo; Yunqi Liu

doi:10.1093/nsr/nwab145

A nonchlorinated solvent-processed polymer semiconductor for high-performance ambipolar transistors

Natl Sci Rev. 2021 Aug 14;9(4):nwab145. doi: 10.1093/nsr/nwab145. eCollection 2022 Apr.

Authors

Jie Yang¹, Yaqian Jiang¹, Zhiyuan Zhao¹, Xueli Yang¹, Zheye Zhang², Jinyang Chen¹, Junyu Li¹, Wei Shi¹, Shuai Wang², Yunlong Guo¹, Yunqi Liu¹

Affiliations

¹ Beijing National Laboratory for Molecular Sciences, Key Laboratory of Organic Solids, Institute of Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190, China.
² School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430074, China.

Abstract

Ambipolar polymer semiconductors are potentially serviceable for logic circuits, light-emitting field-effect transistors (LFETs) and polymer solar cells (PSCs). Although several high-performance ambipolar polymers have been developed, their optoelectronic devices are generally processed from toxic chlorinated solvents. To achieve the commercial applications of organic FETs (OFETs), the polymers should be processed from nonchlorinated solvents, instead of chlorinated solvents. However, most conjugated polymers show poor solubility in nonchlorinated solvents. It is of great importance to develop ambipolar polymers that can be processed from nonchlorinated solvents. Here, we develop a nonchlorinated solvent processed polymer named poly[7-fluoro-N, N^'-di(4-decyltetradecyl)-7^'-azaisoindigo-6^',6^″-(thieno[3,2-b]thiophene-2,5-diyl)-7‴-fluoro-N^″, N‴-di(4-decyltetradecyl)-7^″-azaisoindigo-6,6‴-([2,2^″-bithiophene]-5,5^″-diyl)] (PITTI-BT) by designing a monomer with a large molar mass. The polymer displays good solubility in p-xylene (PX). Well-aligned films of PITTI-BT are achieved by an off-center spin-coating (SC) method. Based on the high-quality films, the OFETs fabricated from PX solution achieve record ambipolar performance with hole and electron mobilities of 3.06 and 2.81 cm² V^-1 s^-1, respectively. The combination of nonchlorinated solvents and good alignment process offers an effective and eco-friendly approach to obtain high-performance ambipolar transistors.

Keywords: alignment; ambipolar transistor; high performance; nonchlorinated solvent.