Flexible Electrochromic Poly(thiophene-furan) Film via Electrodeposition with High Stability

Abstract

Flexible electrochromic (EC) materials have an urgent demand in the current electronic equipment market due to their technological interest and applications. However, at present, few flexible EC devices developed by industry exist due to some problems and challenges still to be solved such as flexibility. In this work, we have successfully synthesized a novel thiophene-furan (TFu) monomer via Stille coupling reaction, and facilely electrochemically polymerized in a neutral Bu4NPF6-CH2Cl2 electrolyte system to afford the corresponding poly(thiophene-furan) (PTFu) polymer film with good flexibility. The electrochemical and photoelectrochemical analyses of the as-prepared PTFu demonstrate that it has achieved the improved EC performance compared with pure polyfuran and polythiophene polymers, and as a result it possesses favorable EC parameters manifested as a reasonable ΔT (32.1%), faster response (1.38 s), excellent coloration efficiency (CE, 300.9 cm2·C−1), and after a continuous redox process up to 2000 s, its optical stability can be maintained at 96%, and even after 3000 s, it can still be maintained at 80%. In addition, the successful assembly of the electrochromic device of PTFu film can easily realize the reversible conversion of the color from orange to gray. All these systematic studies suggest that the as-prepared flexible PTFu film is a promising candidate for EC materials and has great potential interest for versatile EC applications.