Side chain engineering of fused aromatic thienopyrazine based low band-gap polymers for enhanced charge carrier mobility

A strategic side-chain engineering approach leads to the two orders of magnitude enhancement of charge carrier mobility in phenanthrene based fused aromatic thienopyrazine polymers. Hole carrier mobility up to 0.012 cm2/Vs can be obtained in thin film transistor devices. Polymers were also utilized to fabricate bulk heterojunction photovoltaic devices and the maximum PCE obtained in these OPV's was 1.15%. Most importantly, performances of the devices were correlated with thin morphological analysis performed by atomic force microscopy and grazing incidence X-ray scattering.