Diketopyrrolopyrrole copolymers based chemical sensors for the detection and discrimination of volatile organic compounds

Abstract

With their high charge carrier mobility and easy solution processability, diketopyrrolopyrrole (DPP) copolymers are considered as very promising active organic semiconducting materials for a wide range of organic electronic devices. This class of materials has already successfully demonstrated a very high mobility in organic thin film transistors (OFETs) and impressive performance in organic photovoltaic (OPV) devices. Apart from OFET and OPV, there are very few reports about these materials for other organic electronic devices such as chemical sensors. In the present work, we have used these high mobility DPP copolymers as active semiconductors in OFET device based chemical sensors for sensing of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in air. Combined with a pattern recognition algorithm and sensor data obtained from an array of DPP copolymer OFETs, VOCs with similar structure can be discriminated from each other. This opens up a novel opportunity to use promising DPP based polymers as active semiconductors for chemical sensors.