The microelectronics industry and especially the organic/flexible electronics industry continue to demand new innovative polymeric materials. We will demonstrate examples of newly developed polymers of high charge mobility as very promising, printable and stable active materials of printed organic field effect transistors (OFETs). Controlled polymerization techniques like Kumada-Catalyst-Transfer-Polycondensation allow to prepare polymeric semiconductors with precision structure under mild conditions with very low catalyst amount resulting in very high molar mass products with low defects improving performance. We will demonstrate how KCTP has been effectively used for the preparation of dithienosilole (DTS) based conjugated polymers as well as block copolymers with thiophene. But also step growth procedures have been further optimized. Thus, donor-acceptor polymers have been fine-tuned in their electronic properties and microstructure by molecular composition design. Charge mobility in diketopyrrolopyrrole (DPP) polymers could be significantly increased by improving the synthetic procedures and film processing conditions. With those fully printed all-polymer OFET with charge mobility of 0.42 cm2/Vs have been prepared, and, based on working inverters, the very challenging fabrication of a flexible, fully printed, all-polymer ring oscillator was successful. Furthermore, efficient new dopants have been developed for DPP polymers.

Designing conjugated polymers for printed electronic applications

256th National Meeting (2018)

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.