The effect of aromatic ring size in electron deficient semiconducting polymers for n-type organic thermoelectrics
Type
ArticleAuthors
Alsufyani, Maryam
Hallani, Rawad
Wang, Suhao
Xiao, Mingfei
Ji, Xudong
Paulsen, Bryan D.
Xu, Kai
Bristow, Helen
Chen, Hu

Chen, Xingxing

Sirringhaus, Henning
Rivnay, Jonathan
Fabiano, Simone

Wadsworth, Andrew

KAUST Department
Chemical Science ProgramPhysical Science and Engineering (PSE) Division
KAUST Solar Center (KSC)
Laboratory of Organic Electronics, Department of Science and Technology, Linköping University Norrköping SE-60174 Email: maryam.alsufyani@kaust.edu.sa;rawad.hallani@kaust.edu.sa
Northwestern University, Department of Biomedical Engineering 2145 Sheridan Rd Evanston IL 60208 Email: maryam.alsufyani@kaust.edu.sa;rawad.hallani@kaust.edu.sa
Department of Chemistry, Chemistry Research Laboratory, University of Oxford Oxford OX1 3TA Email: maryam.alsufyani@kaust.edu.sa;rawad.hallani@kaust.edu.sa
KAUST Grant Number
OSR-2018-CARF/CCF-3079OSR-2015-CRG4-2572
OSR4106 CPF2019
Date
2020Submitted Date
2020-07-15Permanent link to this record
http://hdl.handle.net/10754/666089
Metadata
Show full item recordAbstract
N-type semiconducting polymers have been recently utilized in thermoelectric devices, however they have typically exhibited low electrical conductivities and poor device stability, in contrast to p-type semiconductors, which have been much higher performing. This is due in particular to the n-type semiconductor's low doping efficiency, and poor charge carrier mobility. Strategies to enhance the thermoelectric performance of n-type materials include optimizing the electron affinity (EA) with respect to the dopant to improve the doping process and increasing the charge carrier mobility through enhanced molecular packing. Here, we report the design, synthesis and characterization of fused electron-deficient n-type copolymers incorporating the electron withdrawing lactone unit along the backbone. The polymers were synthesized using metal-free aldol condensation conditions to explore the effect of enlarging the central phenyl ring to a naphthalene ring, on the electrical conductivity. When n-doped with N-DMBI, electrical conductivities of up to 0.28 S cm-1, Seebeck coefficients of -75 μV K-1 and maximum Power factors of 0.16 μW m-1 K-2 were observed from the polymer with the largest electron affinity of -4.68 eV. Extending the aromatic ring reduced the electron affinity, due to reducing the density of electron withdrawing groups and subsequently the electrical conductivity reduced by almost two orders of magnitude. This journal isCitation
Alsufyani, M., Hallani, R. K., Wang, S., Xiao, M., Ji, X., Paulsen, B. D., … McCulloch, I. (2020). The effect of aromatic ring size in electron deficient semiconducting polymers for n-type organic thermoelectrics. Journal of Materials Chemistry C, 8(43), 15150–15157. doi:10.1039/d0tc03347bSponsors
The research reported in this publication was supported by funding from King Abdullah University of Science and Technology Office of Sponsored Research (OSR) under awards no. OSR-2018-CARF/CCF-3079, no. OSR-2015-CRG4-2572 and OSR4106 CPF2019. We acknowledge EC FP7 Project SC2 (610115), EC H2020 (643791), and EPSRC Projects EP/G037515/1, EP/M005143/1, and EP/L016702/1. X. D., B. P., and J. R. gratefully acknowledge support from the National Science FoundationGrant No. NSF DMR-1751308. Special thanks to Joseph Strzalka and Qingteng Zhang for beam line assistance. This research used resources of the Advanced Photon Source, a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science User Facility operated for the DOE Office of Science by Argonne National Laboratory under Contract No. DE-AC02-06CH11357. S. F. acknowledges the Swedish Research Council (2016-03979), ÅForsk (18-313,19-310), Olle Engkvists Stiftelse (204-0256), and the Advanced Functional Materials Center at Linko¨ping University (2009-00971) for financial support.Publisher
Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC)Journal
Journal of Materials Chemistry CAdditional Links
http://xlink.rsc.org/?DOI=D0TC03347Bae974a485f413a2113503eed53cd6c53
10.1039/d0tc03347b
Scopus Count
Except where otherwise noted, this item's license is described as This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported Licence.