Extending Polymer Conjugation Into The Second Dimension

摘要

Organic materials are typically insulators, but polymers with backbones containing extended networks of conjugated π bonds can exhibit semiconducting behavior. Conjugated polymer semiconductors are used as active materials in optoelectronic devices, particularly in applications in which high speed is not critical. Their advantages versus traditional inorganic materials include simpler and cheaper processing and tunable properties. Yet the trade-off is a lower mobility of charge carriers in these more disordered systems. Conjugated polymers are one-dimensional (1D) chains, so the charge carriers are slowed down as they hop between chains and across disordered chain fragments. Efforts are under way to create polymers with conjugation in two dimensions, because they may have enhanced carrier mobility or other favorable properties.