Abstract
High-mobility semiconducting polymers offer the opportunity to develop flexible and large-area electronics for several applications, including wearable, portable and distributed sensors, monitoring and actuating devices. An enabler of this technology is a scalable printing process achieving uniform electrical performances over large area. As opposed to the deposition of highly crystalline films, orientational alignment of polymer chains, albeit commonly achieved by non-scalable/slow bulk alignment schemes, is a more robust approach towards large-area electronics. By combining pre-aggregating solvents for formulating the semiconductor and by adopting a room temperature wired bar-coating technique, here we demonstrate the fast deposition of submonolayers and nanostructured films of a model electron-transporting polymer. Our approach enables directional self-assembling of polymer chains exhibiting large transport anisotropy and a mobility up to 6.4 cm2 V−1 s−1, allowing very simple device architectures to operate at 3.3 MHz. Thus, the proposed deposition strategy is exceptionally promising for mass manufacturing of high-performance polymer circuits.
Highlights
High-mobility semiconducting polymers offer the opportunity to develop flexible and largearea electronics for several applications, including wearable, portable and distributed sensors, monitoring and actuating devices
In this work we demonstrate that the manifold molecular assembling properties of a model n-type polymeric semiconductor, poly{[N,N0-bis(2-octyldodecyl)-naphthalene1,4,5,8-bis(dicarboximide)-2,6-diyl]-alt-5,50-(2,20-bithiophene)} (P(NDI2OD-T2)), one of the most studied n-type polymeric semiconductor[25,26,27,28,29], can be finely controlled over the meso- and micro-scale for film processing at low temperatures and in ambient air using bar coating[30]
It was recently found that in certain solvents, for example, mesitylene, P(NDI2OD-T2) strongly aggregates, and films cast from this solvent exhibit extended polymer regions, hundreds of micrometres wide, characterized by a marked molecular orientational order[37,38]
Summary
High-mobility semiconducting polymers offer the opportunity to develop flexible and largearea electronics for several applications, including wearable, portable and distributed sensors, monitoring and actuating devices. Exceptional reproducibility and data uniformity is observed for aligned films with mobilities up to 6.4 cm[2] V À 1 s À 1, reaching the highest values for a polymeric n-type semiconductor This result enormously facilitates the roll-to-roll compatible fabrication of printed polymer-based FETs operating in the MHz regime, mandatory for key applications such as printed radio-frequency identification tags and addressing electronics for video displays, without recurring to sophisticated processes[35,36]. Such level of control in the spatial alignment of nanosized supramolecular structures and in the charge transport properties over large areas, achieved with an extremely simple and high-throughput process, has strong technological relevance representing a stepping stone to the full deployment of optimal charge transport properties in mass-manufactured polymer electronics
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