Macroscopic and high-throughput printing of aligned nanostructured polymer semiconductors for MHz large-area electronics

Sadir G. Bucella; Alessandro Luzio; Eliot Gann; Lars Thomsen; Christopher R. McNeill; Giuseppina Pace; Andrea Perinot; Zhihua Chen; Antonio Facchetti; Mario Caironi

doi:10.1038/ncomms9394

Macroscopic and high-throughput printing of aligned nanostructured polymer semiconductors for MHz large-area electronics

Sadir G. Bucella, Alessandro Luzio^*, Eliot Gann, Lars Thomsen, Christopher R. McNeill, Giuseppina Pace, Andrea Perinot, Zhihua Chen, Antonio Facchetti, Mario Caironi

^*Corresponding author for this work

Chemistry

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

292 Scopus citations

Abstract

High-mobility semiconducting polymers offer the opportunity to develop flexible and large-area electronics for several applications, including wearable, portable and distributed sensors, monitoring and actuating devices. An enabler of this technology is a scalable printing process achieving uniform electrical performances over large area. As opposed to the deposition of highly crystalline films, orientational alignment of polymer chains, albeit commonly achieved by non-scalable/slow bulk alignment schemes, is a more robust approach towards large-area electronics. By combining pre-aggregating solvents for formulating the semiconductor and by adopting a room temperature wired bar-coating technique, here we demonstrate the fast deposition of submonolayers and nanostructured films of a model electron-transporting polymer. Our approach enables directional self-assembling of polymer chains exhibiting large transport anisotropy and a mobility up to 6.4 cm 2 V â '1 s â '1, allowing very simple device architectures to operate at 3.3 MHz. Thus, the proposed deposition strategy is exceptionally promising for mass manufacturing of high-performance polymer circuits.

Original language	English (US)
Article number	8394
Journal	Nature communications
Volume	6
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1038/ncomms9394
State	Published - Sep 25 2015

Funding

The authors are thankful to G. Dell’Erba for support with the ac measurements and N. Bienville for assistance with the bar-coating. This work has been in part financially supported by the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme ‘HEROIC’, grant agreement 638059. C.R.M. thanks the Australian Research Council for support (FT100100275, DP130102616). Parts of this research were undertaken on the soft X-ray beamline and the SAXS/WAXS beamline of the Australian Synchrotron, Victoria Australia.

ASJC Scopus subject areas

General Physics and Astronomy
General Chemistry
General Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology

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Cite this

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title = "Macroscopic and high-throughput printing of aligned nanostructured polymer semiconductors for MHz large-area electronics",

abstract = "High-mobility semiconducting polymers offer the opportunity to develop flexible and large-area electronics for several applications, including wearable, portable and distributed sensors, monitoring and actuating devices. An enabler of this technology is a scalable printing process achieving uniform electrical performances over large area. As opposed to the deposition of highly crystalline films, orientational alignment of polymer chains, albeit commonly achieved by non-scalable/slow bulk alignment schemes, is a more robust approach towards large-area electronics. By combining pre-aggregating solvents for formulating the semiconductor and by adopting a room temperature wired bar-coating technique, here we demonstrate the fast deposition of submonolayers and nanostructured films of a model electron-transporting polymer. Our approach enables directional self-assembling of polymer chains exhibiting large transport anisotropy and a mobility up to 6.4 cm 2 V {\^a} '1 s {\^a} '1, allowing very simple device architectures to operate at 3.3 MHz. Thus, the proposed deposition strategy is exceptionally promising for mass manufacturing of high-performance polymer circuits.",

author = "Bucella, {Sadir G.} and Alessandro Luzio and Eliot Gann and Lars Thomsen and McNeill, {Christopher R.} and Giuseppina Pace and Andrea Perinot and Zhihua Chen and Antonio Facchetti and Mario Caironi",

note = "Funding Information: The authors are thankful to G. Dell{\textquoteright}Erba for support with the ac measurements and N. Bienville for assistance with the bar-coating. This work has been in part financially supported by the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union{\textquoteright}s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme {\textquoteleft}HEROIC{\textquoteright}, grant agreement 638059. C.R.M. thanks the Australian Research Council for support (FT100100275, DP130102616). Parts of this research were undertaken on the soft X-ray beamline and the SAXS/WAXS beamline of the Australian Synchrotron, Victoria Australia. Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} 2015 Macmillan Publishers Limited. All rights reserved.",

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AU - McNeill, Christopher R.

AU - Pace, Giuseppina

AU - Perinot, Andrea

AU - Chen, Zhihua

AU - Facchetti, Antonio

AU - Caironi, Mario

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PY - 2015/9/25

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N2 - High-mobility semiconducting polymers offer the opportunity to develop flexible and large-area electronics for several applications, including wearable, portable and distributed sensors, monitoring and actuating devices. An enabler of this technology is a scalable printing process achieving uniform electrical performances over large area. As opposed to the deposition of highly crystalline films, orientational alignment of polymer chains, albeit commonly achieved by non-scalable/slow bulk alignment schemes, is a more robust approach towards large-area electronics. By combining pre-aggregating solvents for formulating the semiconductor and by adopting a room temperature wired bar-coating technique, here we demonstrate the fast deposition of submonolayers and nanostructured films of a model electron-transporting polymer. Our approach enables directional self-assembling of polymer chains exhibiting large transport anisotropy and a mobility up to 6.4 cm 2 V â '1 s â '1, allowing very simple device architectures to operate at 3.3 MHz. Thus, the proposed deposition strategy is exceptionally promising for mass manufacturing of high-performance polymer circuits.

AB - High-mobility semiconducting polymers offer the opportunity to develop flexible and large-area electronics for several applications, including wearable, portable and distributed sensors, monitoring and actuating devices. An enabler of this technology is a scalable printing process achieving uniform electrical performances over large area. As opposed to the deposition of highly crystalline films, orientational alignment of polymer chains, albeit commonly achieved by non-scalable/slow bulk alignment schemes, is a more robust approach towards large-area electronics. By combining pre-aggregating solvents for formulating the semiconductor and by adopting a room temperature wired bar-coating technique, here we demonstrate the fast deposition of submonolayers and nanostructured films of a model electron-transporting polymer. Our approach enables directional self-assembling of polymer chains exhibiting large transport anisotropy and a mobility up to 6.4 cm 2 V â '1 s â '1, allowing very simple device architectures to operate at 3.3 MHz. Thus, the proposed deposition strategy is exceptionally promising for mass manufacturing of high-performance polymer circuits.

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Macroscopic and high-throughput printing of aligned nanostructured polymer semiconductors for MHz large-area electronics

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