Beating the heat by blending
Charge carriers move through semiconductor polymers by hopping transport. In principle, these polymers should be more conductive at higher temperatures. In practice, conductivity drops at high temperatures because interchain contacts are disrupted, which limits potential applications. Gumyusenge et al. now show that appropriate blending of a semicrystalline conjugated polymer with an insulating polymer that has a high glass-transition temperature creates a morphology that stabilizes a network of semiconductor channels. High charge conductivity was maintained in these materials up to 220°C.
Science, this issue p. 1131
Abstract
Although high-temperature operation (i.e., beyond 150°C) is of great interest for many electronics applications, achieving stable carrier mobilities for organic semiconductors at elevated temperatures is fundamentally challenging. We report a general strategy to make thermally stable high-temperature semiconducting polymer blends, composed of interpenetrating semicrystalline conjugated polymers and high glass-transition temperature insulating matrices. When properly engineered, such polymer blends display a temperature-insensitive charge transport behavior with hole mobility exceeding 2.0 cm2/V·s across a wide temperature range from room temperature up to 220°C in thin-film transistors.
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