A Facile Approach to Improve Interchain Packing Order and Charge Mobilities by Self‐Assembly of Conjugated Polymers on Water

Abstract

Development of facile and economic approaches for assembling organic semiconductors into more ordered structures toward high charge mobilities is highly demanding for the fabrication of organic circuits. Here a simple and facile approach is reported to prepare conjugated polymer thin films with improved crystallinities and charge mobilities by self‐assembling semiconducting polymers on water. The formation of polymer thin films with more ordered structures is attributed to coffee ring effect induced by solvent‐evaporation on water, and the hydrophobic nature of conjugated polymers that forces the polymer chains to pack densely and orderly on water surface. This approach is applicable to typical semiconducting polymers, and charge mobilities of their thin films are boosted remarkably. Finally, this new method can be utilized to easily fabricate the array of field‐effect transistors with high charge mobilities in an economic way.

The Effects of Side Chains on the Charge Mobilities and Functionalities of Semiconducting Conjugated Polymers beyond Solubilities

“…The removal of the alkyl chains in P3 also leads to the variation of the arrangement of polymer chains on the hydrophobic surface. The polymer chains of P3 are adopted an edge‐on packing mode, which is beneficial for charge transporting, whereas the polymer chains of P4 are arranged predominately in the face‐on mode. As a result, the polymer chains of P3 are orderly packed and its thin film shows improved charge transporting performance.…”

Incorporation of hydrogen‐bonding units into polymeric semiconductors toward boosting charge mobility, intrinsic stretchability, and self‐healing ability

“… 42 P23 exhibits improved crystallinity and higher hole mobility of 9.1 cm 2 /(V·s), while the mobility of its analogous polymers with alkyl chains is only 5.1 cm 2 /(V·s). More importantly, the thymine group can efficiently coordinate with metal ions such as Pd(II) and Hg(II) by a simple approach of solvent evaporation induced self‐assembly on water 60 . The coordination of ions on air‐water interfacial was confirmed by X‐ray photoelectron spectroscopy analysis.…”

Diketopyrrolopyrrole-based conjugated polymers synthesized by direct arylation polycondensation for anisole-processed high mobility organic thin-film transistors

“…1–8 Significant progress in material exploration and device engineering has pushed the performance of OTFTs of up to the commercialization threshold. 9–16 To date, halogenated solvents, such as chlorobenzene, o -dichlorobenzene ( o -DCB), chloroform and so on, have usually been used for the fabrication of high performance OTFTs. These solvents suffer from serious health and environmental issues.…”