High Aspect Ratio Conjugated Polymer Nanowires for High Performance Field-Effect Transistors and Phototransistors

We synthesized a highly crystalline DPP-based polymer, DPPBTSPE, which contained 1,2-bis(5-(thiophen-2-yl)selenophen-2-yl)ethene as a planar and rigid electron donating group. High- and low-molecular weight (MW) DPPBTSPE fractions were collected by Soxhlet extraction and were employed to investigate their unique charge transport properties in macroscopic films and single crystalline polymer nanowire (SC-PNW), respectively. The low-MW polymer could provide well-isolated and high aspect ratio SC-PNWs, in which the direction of π–π stacking was perpendicular to the wire growing axis. The field effect transistors made of SC-PNWs exhibited remarkably high carrier mobility of 24 cm2 V–1 s–1. In addition, phototransistors (PTs) made of SC-PNW showed very high performance in terms of photoresponsivity (R) and photoswitching ratio (P). The average R of the SC PNW-based PTs were in the range of 160–170 A W–1 and the maximum R was measured at 1920 A W–1, which is almost three orders higher than that of thin film-based PT device.

http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acsnano.5b01982