Thiazole Imide-Based All-Acceptor Homopolymer with Branched Ethylene Glycol Side Chains for Organic Thermoelectrics

초록

n-Type semiconducting polymers with high thermoelectric performance remain challenging due to the scarcity of molecular design strategy, limiting their applications in organic thermoelectric (OTE) devices. Herein, we provide a new approach to enhance the OTE performance of n-doped polymers by introducing acceptor-acceptor (A-A) type backbone bearing branched ethylene glycol (EG) side chains. When doped with 4-(2,3-dihydro-1,3-dimethyl-1H-benzimidazol-2-yl)-N,N-dimethylbenzenamine (N-DMBI), the A-A homopolymer PDTzTI-TEG exhibits n-type electrical conductivity (sigma) up to 34 S cm(-1) and power factor value of 15.7 mu W m(-1) K-2. The OTE performance of PDTzTI-TEG is far greater than that of homopolymer PBTI-TEG (sigma=0.27 S cm(-1)), indicating that introducing electron-deficient thiazole units in the backbone further improves the n-doping efficiency. These results demonstrate that developing A-A type polymers with EG side chains is an effective strategy to enhance n-type OTE performance.

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