Indolo-naphthyridine-6,13-dione thiophene building block for conjugated polymer electronics: Molecular origin of ultrahigh n-type mobility (Conference Presentation)

We present the synthesis and characterization of four conjugated polymers containing a novel chromophore for organic electronics based on an indigoid structure. These polymers exhibit extremely small band gaps of ∼1.2 eV, impressive crystallinity, and extremely high n-type mobility exceeding 3 cm2 V s–1. The n-type charge carrier mobility can be correlated with the remarkably high crystallinity along the polymer backbone having a correlation length in excess of 20 nm. Theoretical analysis reveals that the novel polymers have highly rigid nonplanar geometries demonstrating that backbone planarity is not a prerequisite for either narrow band gap materials or ultrahigh mobilities. Furthermore, the variation in backbone crystallinity is dependent on the choice of comonomer. We find that electron mobility can be correlated to the degree of order along the conjugated polymer backbone. Finally, we use this novel system to begin to understand the complicated effect of alkyl chain variation on the solid state packing in all 3 dimensions.