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Three novel rigid-rod semiconducting polymers containing fused electron-deficient PDI and IID units have been synthesized through aldol polymerization. Their unique opto-electronic properties have been investigated systematically.

We report the “green” synthesis and characterization of a series of fused benzo[1,2-b:4,5-b′]bis[b]benzothiophene (BBBT) polymers containing a phenyl ring and naphthalene as comonomers, as well as BBBT homopolymers. These novel fused polymers have been obtained from simple acid and hexaethyltriaminophosphine catalyzed polymerization without involving any metal catalyst. The effect of the different aromatic units on the optical and electronic properties of the resulting polymers has been studied. It was found that these polymers possess high electron affinities due to the presence of electron-deficient lactams on each repeat unit. BBBT-P and BBBT-N exhibit NIR absorption spectra with the tail extending to 1000 nm, while the BBBT homopolymer exhibits a large blue-shifted absorption.

The development of high-performance and well-balanced ambipolar conjugated polymers are critical to next generation optoelectronic devices. Herein, we report the synthesis and characterization of two APBDOPV polymers containing alternative bis-thiophene, and bis-selenophene as comonomers. The relationship between the structure and opto-electrical property, thin film morphology, molecular packing and solution processing thin film transistors have been investigated systemically. Our results showed that by increasing the size of the chalcogen atom, a stronger red-shifted absorption spectrum, higher IP and a reduced optical band gap are observed for selenophene-containing polymers. The enhanced EA and the planar backbone make both polymers as ambipolar charge transport behaviors under ambient conditions. Particularly, selenophene-containing polymer exhibits much higher and well-balanced hole/electron mobilities up to 0.11/0.15 cm2 V−1 s−1 under ambient conditions with a BGTC device configuration. After further optimization of the TGBC configuration, higher hole/electron mobility of 0.19/0.76 cm2 V−1 s−1 are achieved. Our results also demonstrate that introducing the chalcogen atom into the conjugated backbone is an effective approach to tune the property of the semiconducting polymers.