Direct observation of confinement effects of semiconducting polymers in polymer blend electronic systems
File(s)
Published version
Author(s)
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
The advent of special types of polymeric semiconductors, known as “polymer blends,” presents new opportunities for the development of next-generation electronics based on these semiconductors' versatile functionalities in device applications. Although these polymer blends contain semiconducting polymers (SPs) mixed with a considerably high content of insulating polymers, few of these blends unexpectedly yield much higher charge carrier mobilities than those of pure SPs. However, the origin of such an enhancement has remained unclear owing to a lack of cases exhibiting definite improvements in charge carrier mobility, and the limited knowledge concerning the underlying mechanism thereof. In this study, the morphological changes and internal nanostructures of polymer blends based on various SP types with different intermolecular interactions in an insulating polystyrene matrix are investigated. Through this investigation, the physical confinement of donor–acceptor type SP chains in a continuous nanoscale network structure surrounded by polystyrenes is shown to induce structural ordering with more straight edge-on stacked SP chains. Hereby, high-performance and transparent organic field-effect transistors with a hole mobility of ≈5.4 cm2 V–1 s–1 and an average transmittance exceeding 72% in the visible range are achieved.
Date Issued
2021-07-21
Date Acceptance
2021-05-01
Citation
Advanced Science, 2021, 8 (14), pp.1-10
ISSN
2198-3844
Publisher
Wiley
Start Page
1
End Page
10
Journal / Book Title
Advanced Science
Volume
8
Issue
14
Copyright Statement
© 2021 The Authors. Advanced Science published by Wiley-VCH GmbH
This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
License URL
Identifier
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/advs.202100332
Publication Status
Published
Date Publish Online
2021-05-14