Non‐halogenated Solvent Processable and High‐density Photo‐patternable Polymer Semiconductors Enabled by Incorporating Hydroxyl Groups in the Side Chains

Abstract

Polymer semiconductors hold tremendous potential for applications in flexible devices, which is however hindered by the fact that they are usually processed by halogenated solvents rather than environmentally more friendly solvents. We herein present an effective strategy to boost the solubility of high‐performance polymer semiconductors in non‐halogenated solvents such as tetrahydrofuran (THF) by appending hydroxyl groups in the side chains. The results show that hydroxyl groups, which can be easily incorporated into the side chains, can significantly improve the solubility of typical p‐ and n‐types as well as ambipolar polymer semiconductors in THF. Meanwhile, the thin films of these polymer semiconductors from the respective THF solutions show high charge mobilities. With THF as the processing and developing solvents these polymer semiconductors with hydroxyl groups in the side chains can be well photo‐patterned in the presence of the photo‐crosslinker, and the charge mobilities of the patterned thin films are mostly maintained by comparing with those of the respective pristine thin films. Notably, we successfully utilized THF as the processing and developing solvents to achieve high density photo‐patterning with ∼82000 device arrays/cm² for polymer semiconductors in which hydroxyl groups are appended in the side chains.

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