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(-1) s(-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.
authors.affiliation: Center for Nano Science and Technology @PoliMi, Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, Via Pascoli 70/3, Milano 20133, Italy.|Politecnico di Milano, Dipartimento di Fisica, P.za L. da Vinci 32, Milano 20133, Italy.
authors.forename: Sadir G
authors.initials: SG
authors.lastname: Bucella
authors.affiliation: Center for Nano Science and Technology @PoliMi, Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, Via Pascoli 70/3, Milano 20133, Italy.
authors.forename: Alessandro
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Luzio
authors.affiliation: Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Monash University, Wellington Road, Clayton, Victoria 3800, Australia.|Australian Synchrotron, 800 Blackburn Road, Clayton, Victoria 3168, Australia.
authors.forename: Eliot
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Gann
authors.affiliation: Australian Synchrotron, 800 Blackburn Road, Clayton, Victoria 3168, Australia.
authors.forename: Lars
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Thomsen
authors.affiliation: Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Monash University, Wellington Road, Clayton, Victoria 3800, Australia.
authors.forename: Christopher R
authors.initials: CR
authors.lastname: McNeill
authors.affiliation: Center for Nano Science and Technology @PoliMi, Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, Via Pascoli 70/3, Milano 20133, Italy.
authors.forename: Giuseppina
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Pace
authors.affiliation: Center for Nano Science and Technology @PoliMi, Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, Via Pascoli 70/3, Milano 20133, Italy.|Politecnico di Milano, Dipartimento di Fisica, P.za L. da Vinci 32, Milano 20133, Italy.
authors.forename: Andrea
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Perinot
authors.affiliation: Polyera Corporation, 8045 Lamon Avenue, Skokie, Illinois 60077, USA.
authors.forename: Zhihua
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.affiliation: Polyera Corporation, 8045 Lamon Avenue, Skokie, Illinois 60077, USA.
authors.forename: Antonio
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Facchetti
authors.affiliation: Center for Nano Science and Technology @PoliMi, Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, Via Pascoli 70/3, Milano 20133, Italy.
authors.forename: Mario
authors.identifier: http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0442-4439
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Caironi