Synthesis of New Vat Dyes for Organic Electronics Applications

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Vat dyes possessing a pi-conjugated structure are drawing considerable attention as potential building blocks for the preparation of highly efficient semiconducting materials for various organic electronic applications. One of the biggest advantages of these dyes is their optical properties in the visible range, making them attractive for both organic solar cells (OSCs) and dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs), and for organic light-emitting diode (OLED) applications. In addition, their large carbon-rich, rigid pi-conjugated structure allows for excellent charge transport properties that could be exploited in organic field-effect transistors (OFETs) and battery applications. Other noteworthy advantages are their very low cost when bought in bulk owing to the few, inexpensive synthetic steps required to prepare them, their high environmental, thermal and chemical stability, and the possibility of performing chemical trans- formation to change their properties. Recently, many researchers have explored the chemistry of vat dyes to eventually introduce them as the active component in organic electronic applications. In fact, most of the vat dyes possess a large pi-conjugated system that provides efficient light absorption in the low energy region of the visible spectrum, making them very interesting building blocks for the preparation of light-harvesting semiconductors for OSCs. Moreover, small molecules and polymers based on vat dyes packed very efficiently with a maximum p overlap in the thin-film state, which is highly beneficial to charge transport properties. This is particularly critical for the development of OFETs, whose efficiency strongly depends on the thin-film morphology. Finally, vat dye-based molecules can be made highly emissive by simple derivatization, which makes them interesting candidates for organic light-emitting diode (OLED) applications. In this project, we propose to prepare organic semiconductors made from vat orange 1, a very common and low-cost vat dye, and tests them in organic electronics devices. While the synthesis and basic physical characterization will be achieved in Prof. Morin's lab, all the testing in electronic devices, mostly field-effect transistors (OFETs), will be performed in Prof. Weitz lab in Germany.