title: Macroscopic Alignment of One-Dimensional Conjugated Polymer Nanocrystallites for High-Mobility Organic Field-Effect Transistors.
abstract: Controlling the morphology of polymer semiconductors remains a fundamental challenge that hinders their widespread applications in electronic and optoelectronic devices and commercial feasibility. Although conjugated polymer nanowires (NWs) are envisioned to afford high charge-carrier mobility, the alignment of preformed conjugated polymer NWs has not been reported. Here, we demonstrate an extremely simple and effective strategy to generate well-aligned arrays of one-dimensional (1D) polymer semiconductors that exhibit remarkable enhancement in charge transport using a solution shear-coating technique. We show that solution shear coating of poly(alkylthiophene) NWs induces extension or coplanarization of the polymer backbone and highly aligned network films, which results in enhanced intra- and intermolecular ordering and reduced grain boundaries. Consequently, highly aligned poly(3-hexylthiophene) NWs exhibited over 33-fold enhancement in the average carrier mobility, with the highest mobility of 0.32 cm(2) V(-1) s(-1) compared to pristine films. The presented platform is a promising strategy and general approach for achieving well-aligned 1D nanostructures of polymer semiconductors and could enable the next generation of high-performance flexible electronic devices for a wide range of applications.
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemistry and §The Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering, Emory University , Atlanta, Georgia 30322, United States.|School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering ⊥The Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology , Atlanta, Georgia 30332, United States.
authors.forename: Mincheol
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Chang
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemistry and §The Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering, Emory University , Atlanta, Georgia 30322, United States.|School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering ⊥The Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology , Atlanta, Georgia 30332, United States.
authors.forename: Dalsu
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Choi
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemistry and §The Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering, Emory University , Atlanta, Georgia 30322, United States.|School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering ⊥The Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology , Atlanta, Georgia 30332, United States.
authors.forename: Eilaf
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Egap
keywords: charge-carrier mobility; molecular ordering; nanowires; organic-field-effect transistors; poly(alkylthiophene); solution shearing