A facile and robust approach to prepare fluorinated polymer dielectrics for probing the intrinsic transport behavior of organic semiconductors†

Insulating polymers are often used as gate dielectric materials in all-solution processable organic thin-film transistors (OTFTs). Nonetheless, most of the polymers have poor resistance to common halogenated solvents and thus are not feasible for bottom-gate OTFT structures. In this contribution, we show that high molecular weight poly(2,3,4,5,6-pentafluorostyrene) (PPFS) is a gate dielectric material that can be free from this limitation. We prepare PPFS with a facile and efficient approach by using methyl isobutyl ketone (MIK) solvent in a basic wet-lab without the need of complex chemical equipment. Furthermore, the non-polar and hydrophobic nature of the PPFS surface allows us to probe the intrinsic transport behaviors of these acceptors. The MIK solvent-assisted polymerization method provides an alternative for low-cost effective gate polymer dielectric preparation. Such a novel but simple synthesis paradigm not only opens up a broad employment of solution-processable polymeric dielectrics for bottom-gate OTFTs, but also enables the full device potential with high-mobility semiconductors.