Charge transport physics of a unique class of rigid-rod conjugated polymers with fused-ring conjugated units linked by double carbon-carbon bonds

Mingfei Xiao, Remington L. Carey, Hu Chen, Xuechen Jiao, Vincent Lemaur, Sam Schott, Mark Nikolka, Cameron Jellett, Aditya Sadhanala, Sarah Rogers, Satyaprasad P. Senanayak, Ada Onwubiko, Sanyang Han, Zhilong Zhang, Mojtaba Abdi-Jalebi, Youcheng Zhang, Tudor H. Thomas, Najet Mahmoudi, Lianglun Lai, Ekaterina SeleznevaXinglong Ren, Malgorzata Nguyen, Qijing Wang, Ian Jacobs, Wan Yue, Christopher R. McNeill, Guoming Liu, David Beljonne, Iain McCulloch, Henning Sirringhaus

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24 Scopus citations

Abstract

We investigate the charge transport physics of a previously unidentified class of electron-deficient conjugated polymers that do not contain any single bonds linking monomer units along the backbone but only double-bond linkages. Such polymers would be expected to behave as rigid rods, but little is known about their actual chain conformations and electronic structure. Here, we present a detailed study of the structural and charge transport properties of a family of four such polymers. By adopting a copolymer design, we achieve high electron mobilities up to 0.5 cm2 V−1 s−1. Field-induced electron spin resonance measurements of charge dynamics provide evidence for relatively slow hopping over, however, long distances. Our work provides important insights into the factors that limit charge transport in this unique class of polymers and allows us to identify molecular design strategies for achieving even higher levels of performance.
Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)eabe5280
JournalScience advances
Volume7
Issue number18
DOIs
StatePublished - Apr 28 2021

Bibliographical note

KAUST Repository Item: Exported on 2021-05-03
Acknowledgements: S.P.S. and I.J. acknowledge funding through the Royal Society Newton Alumni Fellowship. M.NI and S.H. acknowledge funding through the award of a Marie Curie Global Fellowship. We gratefully acknowledge financial support by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) through a program grant (EP/M005143/1) and by the European Research Council (ERC) through a Synergy grant (SC2 610115). This work was undertaken, in part, at the SAXS/WAXS beamline at the Australian Synchrotron, part of ANSTO. The work in Mons was supported by the European Commission/Région Wallonne (FEDER-SOLIDYE project), the Consortium des Équipements de Calcul Intensif (CÉCI), funded by the Fonds National de la Recherche Scientifique (F.R.S.-FNRS) under grant no. 2.5020.11 as well as the Tier-1 supercomputer of the Fédération WallonieBruxelles, infrastructure funded by the Walloon Region under Grant Agreement n1117545,
and FRS-FNRS. D.B. is FNRS Research Director. M.A.-J. thanks Cambridge Materials Limited, Wolfson College, University of Cambridge, and the Royal Society for funding and technical support. A.S. acknowledges funding and support from the SUNRISE project (EP/P032591/1),
EPSRC, and UKIERI project

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