Acene Ring Size Optimization in Fused Lactam Polymers Enabling High n-Type Organic Thermoelectric Performance
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Acene Ring Size Optimization in Fused Lactam Polymers Enabling High n-Type Organic Thermoelectric Performance .pdf
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2021-12-22
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ArticleAuthors
Chen, Hu
Moser, Maximilian

Wang, Suhao

Jellett, Cameron

Thorley, Karl

Harrison, George T.
Jiao, Xuechen

Xiao, Mingfei
Purushothaman, Balaji
Alsufyani, Maryam

Bristow, Helen
De Wolf, Stefaan

Gasparini, Nicola

Wadsworth, Andrew

McNeill, Christopher R.

Sirringhaus, Henning

Fabiano, Simone

McCulloch, Iain

KAUST Department
KAUST Solar Center (KSC)Physical Science and Engineering (PSE) Division
Physical Science and Engineering Division, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), Thuwal 23955-6900, Saudi Arabia
Chemical Science Program
Material Science and Engineering Program
KAUST Grant Number
OSR-2015-CRG4-2572OSR-2018-CARF/CCF-3079
OSR-4106 CPF2019
Date
2020-12-22Embargo End Date
2021-12-22Submitted Date
2020-09-28Permanent link to this record
http://hdl.handle.net/10754/666616
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Show full item recordAbstract
Three n-type fused lactam semiconducting polymers were synthesized for thermoelectric and transistor applications via a cheap, highly atom-efficient, and nontoxic transition-metal free aldol polycondensation. Energy level analysis of the three polymers demonstrated that reducing the central acene core size from two anthracenes (A-A), to mixed naphthalene–anthracene (A-N), and two naphthalene cores (N-N) resulted in progressively larger electron affinities, thereby suggesting an increasingly more favorable and efficient solution doping process when employing 4-(2,3-dihydro-1,3-dimethyl-1H-benzimidazol-2-yl)-N,N-dimethylbenzenamine (N-DMBI) as the dopant. Meanwhile, organic field effect transistor (OFET) mobility data showed the N-N and A-N polymers to feature the highest charge carrier mobilities, further highlighting the benefits of aryl core contraction to the electronic performance of the materials. Ultimately, the combination of these two factors resulted in N-N, A-N, and A-A to display power factors (PFs) of 3.2 μW m–1 K–2, 1.6 μW m–1 K–2, and 0.3 μW m–1 K–2, respectively, when doped with N-DMBI, whereby the PFs recorded for N-N and A-N are among the highest reported in the literature for n-type polymers. Importantly, the results reported in this study highlight that modulating the size of the central acene ring is a highly effective molecular design strategy to optimize the thermoelectric performance of conjugated polymers, thus also providing new insights into the molecular design guidelines for the next generation of high-performance n-type materials for thermoelectric applications.Citation
Chen, H., Moser, M., Wang, S., Jellett, C., Thorley, K., Harrison, G. T., … McCulloch, I. (2020). Acene Ring Size Optimization in Fused Lactam Polymers Enabling High n-Type Organic Thermoelectric Performance. Journal of the American Chemical Society. doi:10.1021/jacs.0c10365Sponsors
The authors acknowledge generous funding from KAUST for financial support. The research reported in this publication was sponsored by funding from King Abdullah University of Science and Technology Office of Sponsored Research (OSR) under Awards OSR-2018-CARF/CCF-3079, OSR-2015-CRG4-2572, and OSR-4106 CPF2019. We acknowledge EC FP7 Project SC2 (610115), EC H2020 (643791), and EPSRC Projects EP/G037515/1, EP/M005143/1, and EP/L016702/1. This work was performed in part at the SAXS/WAXS beamline at the Australian Synchrotron, part of ANSTO.36 S.F.acknowledges financial support from the Swedish Research Council (Grant 2016-03979), ÅForsk (Grants 18-313, 19-310), Olle Engkvists Stiftelse (Grant 204-0256), and the Advanced Functional Materials Center at Linköping University (Grant 2009-00971).Publisher
American Chemical Society (ACS)Additional Links
https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/jacs.0c10365ae974a485f413a2113503eed53cd6c53
10.1021/jacs.0c10365