Unravelling the Role of Electron Acceptors for the Universal Enhancement of Charge Transport in Quinoid-Donor-Acceptor Polymers for High-Performance Transistors

Authors：Liang, Huanhuan; Liu, Cheng; Zhang, Zesheng; Liu, Xuncheng^*; Zhou, Quanfeng; Zheng, Guohui; Gong, Xiu; Xie, Lan; Yang, Chen; Zhang, Lianjie; He, Bo; Chen, Junwu^*; Liu, Yi^*

Source：Advanced Functional Materials, 2022, 32(30): 2201903.

DOI：10.1002/adfm.202201903

• charge transport
• electron acceptors
• morphologies
• organic field-effect transistors
• quinoid-donor-acceptor strategies

The quinoid-donor-acceptor (Q-D-A) strategy has recently emerged as a promising approach for constructing high mobility semiconducting polymers. In order to fully explore the potential of this strategy in improving the charge transport and elucidating the structure-property-performance relationships in Q-D-A polymers, a series of new polymers with different electron acceptor units and backbone coplanarity have been synthesized and characterized. All of the resulting Q-D-A polymers exhibit much more planar backbone conformations in comparison to their donor-acceptor (D-A) counterparts. Moreover, organic field-effect transistors based on Q-D-A polymers exhibit excellent effective hole mobilities in a range of 0.44 to 3.35 cm(2) V-1 s(-1), most of which are orders of magnitude higher than those of their corresponding D-A polymers. Notably, the hole mobility of 3.35 cm(2) V-1 s(-1) is among the highest for the quinoidal-aromatic polymers characterized by conventional spin-coating methods. Furthermore, the role of electron acceptors in Q-D-A polymers has been comprehensively investigated. Polymers with stronger acceptor units are more inclined to deliver edge-on lamellas, high film crystallinity, small effective hole masses, and decent operational stability. The detailed structure-property-device performance relationship will pave the way toward high performance semiconducting polymers using the potent Q-D-A strategy.

• Institution
  贵州大学; y; 1