Soluble and Amorphous pi-electron-dense Conjugated Organic Polymers for Energy and Electronic Applications

We disclose a novel approach to achieve solubility of pi-conjugated organic electronic materials in commonly used processing solvents without the need for electronically inert substituents commonly used to render these materials soluble.  Furthermore, the materials in the solid-state are completely amorphous and will thus minimize crystallinity within the semiconductor active layer, which is clearly beneficial for some technologies, and is emerging as an important aspect in others.  Our design is based upon an unusual pi-electron building block that we have shown previously to be comparable in performance to standard building blocks used to construct functional pi-electron systems.  Unlike other more common derivatives, the current material has an unusual geometric form that frustrates the strong intermolecular associations that must be overcome in a more typical material in order to achieve solubility.  Therefore, the resulting material has a very high density of active pi-electrons in the final processed form relative to the dilution of these pi-electrons that necessarily must occur within traditional organic semiconductor materials that require electronically insulating alkyl components employed for solubility.

Category(s):