Ultralow bandgap molecular semiconductors for ambient-stable and solution-processable ambipolar organic field-effect transistors and inverters By

Abstract

The design and development of novel ambipolar semiconductors is very crucial to advance various optoelectronic technologies including organic complementary (CMOS) integrated circuits. Although numerous high-performance ambipolar polymers have been realized to date, small molecules have been unable to provide high ambipolar performance in combination with ambient-stability and solution-processibility. In this study, by implementing highly p-electron deficient, ladder-type IFDK/IFDM acceptor cores with bithiophene donor units in D-A-D pi-architectures, two novel small molecules, 2OD-TTIFDK and 2OD-TTIFDM, were designed, synthesized and characterized in order to achieve ultralow band-gap (1.21-1.65 eV) semiconductors with sufficiently balanced molecular energetics for ambipolarity. The HOMO/LUMO energies of the new semiconductors are found to be -5.47/-3.61 and -5.49/-4.23 eV, respectively. Bottom-gate/top-contact OFETs fabricated via solution-shearing of 2OD-TTIFDM yield perfectly ambient stable ambipolar devices with reasonably balanced electron and hole mobilities of 0.13 cm(2) V-1 s(-1) and 0.01 cm(2) V-1 s(-1), respectively with I-on/I-off ratios of similar to 10(3)-10(4), and 2OD-TTIFDK-based OFETs exhibit ambipolarity under vacuum with highly balanced (mu(e)/mu(h) similar to 2) electron and hole mobilities of 0.02 cm(2) V-1 s(-1) and 0.01 cm(2) V-1 s(-1), respectively with I-on/I-off ratios of similar to 10(5)-10(6). Furthermore, complementary-like inverter circuits were demonstrated with the current ambipolar semiconductors resulting in high voltage gains of up to 80. Our findings clearly indicate that ambient-stability of ambipolar semiconductors is a function of molecular orbital energetics without being directly related to a bulk p-backbone structure. To the best of our knowledge, considering the processing, charge-transport and inverter characteristics, the current semiconductors stand out among the best performing ambipolar small molecules in the OFET and CMOS-like circuit literature. Our results provide an efficient approach in designing ultralow band-gap ambipolar small molecules with good solution-processibility and ambient-stability for various optoelectronic technologies, including CMOS-like integrated circuits.