Issue 12, 2015

Enabling high-mobility, ambipolar charge-transport in a DPP-benzotriazole copolymer by side-chain engineering

Abstract

In this article we discuss the synthesis of four new low band-gap co-polymers based on the diketopyrrolopyrrole (DPP) and benzotriazole (BTZ) monomer unit. We demonstrate that the BTZ unit allows for additional solubilizing side-chains on the co-monomer and show that the introduction of a linear side-chain on the DPP-unit leads to an increase in thin-film order and charge-carrier mobility if a sufficiently solubilizing, branched, side chain is attached to the BTZ. We compare two different synthetic routes, direct arylation and Suzuki-polycondensation, by a direct comparison of polymers obtained via the two routes and show that direct arylation produces polymers with lower electrical performance which we attribute to a higher density of chain Furthermore we demonstrate that a polymer utilizing this design motif and synthesized via Suzuki-polycondensation ((l-C18)-DPP-(b-C17)-BTZ) exhibits exceptionally high and near balanced average electron and hole mobilities >2 cm2 V−1 s−1 which are among the highest, robustly extracted mobility values reported for DPP copolymers in a top-gate configuration to date. Our results demonstrate clearly that linear side chain substitution of the DPP unit together with co-monomers that allow for the use of sufficiently long or branched solubilizing side chains can be an attractive design motif for solution processable, high mobility DPP copolymers.

Graphical abstract: Enabling high-mobility, ambipolar charge-transport in a DPP-benzotriazole copolymer by side-chain engineering

Supplementary files

Article information

Article type
Edge Article
Submitted
13 Apr 2015
Accepted
07 Aug 2015
First published
12 Aug 2015
This article is Open Access

All publication charges for this article have been paid for by the Royal Society of Chemistry
Creative Commons BY license

Chem. Sci., 2015,6, 6949-6960

Author version available

Enabling high-mobility, ambipolar charge-transport in a DPP-benzotriazole copolymer by side-chain engineering

M. Gruber, S. Jung, S. Schott, D. Venkateshvaran, A. J. Kronemeijer, J. W. Andreasen, C. R. McNeill, W. W. H. Wong, M. Shahid, M. Heeney, J. Lee and H. Sirringhaus, Chem. Sci., 2015, 6, 6949 DOI: 10.1039/C5SC01326G

This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported Licence. You can use material from this article in other publications without requesting further permissions from the RSC, provided that the correct acknowledgement is given.

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