Fused Bithiophene Imide Dimer-Based n-Type Polymers for High-Performance Organic Electrochemical Transistors

Abstract

The development of n-type organic electrochemical transistors (OECTs) lags far behind their p-type counterparts. In order to address this dilemma, we report here two new fused bithiophene imide dimer (f-BTI2)-based n-type polymers with a branched methyl end-capped glycol side chain, which exhibit good solubility, low-lying LUMO energy levels, favorable polymer chain orientation, and efficient ion transport property, thus yielding a remarkable OECT electron mobility (mu(e)) of up to approximate to 10(-2) cm(2) V-1 s(-1) and volumetric capacitance (C*) as high as 443 F cm(-3), simultaneously. As a result, the f-BTI2TEG-FT-based OECTs deliver a record-high maximum geometry-normalized transconductance of 4.60 S cm(-1) and a maximum mu C* product of 15.2 F cm(-1) V-1 s(-1). The mu C* figure of merit is more than one order of magnitude higher than that of the state-of-the-art n-type OECTs. The emergence of f-BTI2TEG-FT brings a new paradigm for developing high-performance n-type polymers for low-power OECT applications.