Solution-Processable Field-Effect Transistors Fabricated Using Aryl Phenoxazine Based Polymers as the Active Layer

Abstract

Three phenoxazine-based conjugated polymers, namely, the aryl substituted phenoxazine homopolymer (P1) as well as the dimeric phenoxazine-fluorene (P2) and phenoxazine-bithiophene (P3) copolymers, were synthesized via the Ni(0) mediated Yamamoto reaction and the palladium-catalyzed Suzuki coupling reaction. The weight-averaged molecular weights (Mw) of P1, P2, and P3 were found to be 27,000, 22,000, and 15,000, respectively, and their polydispersity indices were 3.6, 1.8, and 2.1. All the polymers were soluble in common organic solvents such as chloroform, toluene, and so on. The UV-visible absorption maxima for P1, P2, and P3 in the film state were located at 421, 415 and 426 nm, respectively, and the ionization potentials of the polymers ranged between 4.90 and 5.12 eV. All the studied phenoxazine-based polymers exhibited amorphous behavior, as confirmed by X-ray diffraction (XRD) and atomic force microscopy (AFM) studies. Thin film transistors were fabricated using the top-contact geometry. P1 showed much better thin-film-transistor performance than P2 or P3: A thin film of P1 gave a saturation mobility of 0.81 × 10