Suppressed surface aggregation and homogeneous integration of π-Bridged polyelectrolyte for boosting charge transport in conjugated polymer semiconductors

Abstract

The introduction of extrinsic materials into host materials has been extensively considered for resolving the challenge of intrinsically low charge movement within semiconducting polymers. One of the difficult issues is developing a dopant that can provide a sufficient interfacial area between host and dopant as well as maintain an efficient charge transport pathway without significantly altering the morphological and crystalline properties of semiconducting polymers. Herein, we propose the use of conjugated polyelectrolyte (CPE), a new highly mixable and mutual dopant for achieving enhanced charge mobility in host conjugated polymers. We found that CPE has more homogeneous dispersion in host polymers than non-conjugated polymeric dopants. This results in enhanced charge mobility in the organic field-effect transistor (OFET) based on a novel p-type semiconducting polymer, poly(3-hexylthiophene) (P3HT) (from 0.076 to 0.135 cm2 V−1 s−1). Atomic force microscopy and grazing incident X-ray diffraction measurements were used to confirm the non-destructive behavior of CPE within P3HT. Therefore, it is believed that CPE is promising for use as a homogeneous chemical dopant for polymer semiconductors. © 2024