An official website of the United States government
Abstract A wide portfolio of advanced programmable materials and structures has been developed for biological applications in the last two decades. Particularly, due to their unique properties, semiconducting materials have been utilized in areas of biocomputing, implantable electronics, and healthcare. As a new concept of such programmable material design, biointerfaces based on inorganic semiconducting materials as substrates introduce unconventional paths for bioinformatics and biosensing. In particular, understanding how the properties of a substrate can alter microbial biofilm behavior enables researchers to better characterize and thus create programmable biointerfaces with necessary characteristics on demand. Herein, the current status of advanced microorganism–inorganic biointerfaces is summarized along with types of responses that can be observed in such hybrid systems. This work identifies promising inorganic material types along with target microorganisms that will be critical for future research on programmable biointerfacial structures.
more »
« less
Solution-processing of semiconducting organic small molecules: what we have learnt from 5,11-bis(triethylsilylethynyl)anthradithiophene
Organic semiconducting small molecules have attracted increasing interest over the last decades because of their versatile, tunable optoelectronic properties and, e.g. , the ease they can be purified compared to polymeric systems. Hence, over the past few decades, a large number of small molecules, such as acenes and thiophenes, have been explored for use in semiconducting devices such as thin-film transistors. However, many of these materials can adopt various molecular arrangements, producing polymorphic structures. As a result, the same material can display vastly different optoelectronic properties. This can, in many cases, lead to a large spread of device performances. Hence, it is critical to establish knowledge- and characterization libraries towards relevant structure/processing/performance interrelations to further advance this interesting class of materials and to open new application platforms. Here, we discuss processing strategies and methodologies that allow the control and assessment of polymorph formation in semiconducting small molecules using 5,11-bis(triethylsilylethynyl)anthradithiophene (TES ADT) as a model material system. We revise how a window into the complex phase behavior of semiconducting small molecules can be obtained, how specific polymorphs can be induced, and how post-deposition treatments can be exploited. Moreover, we illustrate pathways towards patterned structures as needed to fully exploit the touted potential of this interesting class of semiconductors.
more »
« less
- Award ID(s):
- 1905901
- PAR ID:
- 10344847
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Journal of Materials Chemistry C
- Volume:
- 9
- Issue:
- 33
- ISSN:
- 2050-7526
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 10547 to 10556
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
More Like this
-
-
Solution-processable organic materials for emerging electronics can generally be divided into two classes of semiconductors, organic small molecules and polymers. The theoretical thermodynamic limits of device performance are largely determined by the molecular structure of these compounds, and advances in synthetic routes have led to significant progress in charge mobilities and light conversion and light emission efficiencies over the past several decades. Still, the uncontrolled formation of out-of-equilibrium film microstructures and unfavorable polymorphs during rapid solution processing remains a critical bottleneck facing the commercialization of these materials. This tutorial review provides an overview of the use of nanoconfining scaffolds to impose order onto solution-processed semiconducting films to overcome this limitation. For organic semiconducting small molecules and polymers, which typically exhibit strong crystal growth and charge transport anisotropy along different crystallographic directions, nanoconfining crystallization within nanopores and nanogrooves can preferentially orient the fast charge transport direction of crystals with the direction of current flow in devices. Nanoconfinement can also stabilize high-performance metastable polymorphs by shifting their relative Gibbs free energies via increasing the surface area-to-volume ratio. Promisingly, such nanoconfinement-induced improvements in film and crystal structures have been demonstrated to enhance the performance and stability of emerging optoelectronics that will enable large-scale manufacturing of flexible, lightweight displays and solar cells.more » « less
-
Abstract The optoelectronic properties of semiconducting polymers and device performance rely on a delicate interplay of design and processing conditions. However, screening and optimizing the relationships between these parameters for reliably fabricating organic electronics can be an arduous task requiring significant time and resources. To overcome this challenge, Polybot is developed—a robotic platform within a self‐driving lab that can efficiently produce organic field‐effect transistors (OFETs) from various semiconducting polymers via high‐throughput blade coating deposition. Polybot not only handles the fabrication process but also can conduct characterization tests on the devices and autonomously analyze the data gathered, thus facilitating the rapid acquisition of data on a large scale. This work leverages the capabilities of this platform to investigate the fabrication of OFETs using hydrogen bonding‐containing semiconducting polymers. Through high‐throughput fabrication and characterization, various data trends are analyzed, and large extents of anisotropic charge mobility are observed in devices. The materials are thoroughly characterized to understand the role of processing conditions in solid state and electronic properties of these organic semiconductors. The findings demonstrate the effectiveness of automated fabrication and characterization platforms in uncovering novel structure–property relationships, facilitating refinement of rational chemical design, and processing conditions, ultimately leading to new semiconducting materials.more » « less
-
Two-dimensional semiconductors (2DSCs) are attractive for a variety of optoelectronic and catalytic applications due to their ability to be fabricated as wide-area, monolayer-thick films and their unique optical and electronic properties which emerge at this scale. One important class of 2DSCs are the transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs), which are of particular interest as absorbing layers in ultrathin optoelectronic devices. While TMDs are known to exhibit excellent photovoltaic properties at the bulk level, it is not yet clear how carriers are transported in these materials at thicknesses approaching the monolayer limit, where distinct changes in band structure and the nature of photogenerated carriers occur. Here, it is demonstrated that electrochemical microscopy techniques can be employed as powerful tools for visualizing these processes in 2DSCs, even within individual monolayers. Carrier generation-tip collection scanning electrochemical cell microscopy (CG-TC SECCM), which utilizes spatially-offset optical and pipet-based electrochemical probes to locally generate and detect photogenerated carriers, was applied to visualize carrier generation and transport within well-defined n-WSe 2 samples prepared via mechanical exfoliation. Data from these experiments directly reveal how carrier transport varies within complex 2DSC structures as layer thicknesses approach the monolayer limit. These results not only provide valuable new insights into carrier transport within monolayer TMD materials, but also demonstrate electrochemical imaging to be a powerful, yet underutilized approach for visualizing solid-state processes in semiconducting materials.more » « less
-
Organic electronics is a rising field, with novel applications including but not limited to stretchable solar cells, flexible display screens, and biosensors. The high performance of these organic electronics is enabled by the outstanding optoelectronic and thermomechanical features of organic semiconducting materials. However, the production of the promising organic semiconducting materials at industrial scales has not yet become feasible, due to huge energy and capital costs in the large-scale synthesis as well as the potential damage to the environment and human health caused by vast hazardous chemical waste released. This review summarizes recent research advances in improving the environmental friendliness of the organic semiconducting material synthesis by appying atom economical C–H functionalization-based synthetic routes, minimizing hazardous chemical waste, lowering the energy consumption, and employing safe and abundant chemicals including naturally sourced semiconducting building blocks. This review showcases the remarkable progress that has been made towards the environmentally friendly organic semiconductor synthesis and provides insight for researchers developing green synthetic strategies and organic semiconductor building blocks in the future.more » « less
- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
-
Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.1039/d1tc01418h
