Microstructure of Organic Semiconductors Controlled by Solution Processing

塑料电子包括材料科学，分子电子材料的化学和物理学以及这些材料在显示器，照明，柔性薄膜电子，太阳能转换和传感器中的应用。该领域在国内和全球都是一个增长领域，有机显示器和印刷电子行业的迅速发展就是明证。有机薄膜电子学如此快速的进展源于有机化合物的易加工性和图案化，加上大面积沉积和低成本的前景。为了确保有机电子学的进一步发展，从而将其确立为下一代技术，需要提高我们控制溶液处理膜的微结构的能力，这反过来又依赖于我们对这些微结构对光电和电荷传输特性的影响的基本理解。器件性能对有机半导体（OSC）的微观结构和影响薄膜中特定微观结构发展的因素的依赖性仍然很差，需要迫切关注。拟议的研究旨在为这一问题提供关键的基础和技术见解。我们的目标是通过溶液处理来控制OSC的分子顺序，取向和排列方面的微观结构。我们的目标是阐明加工过程中影响OSC微结构的重要参数，从而确定这些微结构与OSC光电性能之间的关系。特别注意控制具有不同堆积结构的OSC（小分子和共轭聚合物）的微结构，以了解分子的化学结构和堆积基序对薄膜微结构形成的作用。还将尝试对具有各种长度尺度的先进器件架构（例如混合物和多层）进行溶液处理，以制造高度雄心勃勃的所有印刷的柔性大面积有机电子器件。预计该项目将产生三大影响：（i）揭示功能分子材料的关键结构-性质关系，（ii）建立基于溶液的印刷方法作为控制功能分子材料的微结构的工具，其可以针对各种光电器件进行优化，以及（iii）制造用于太阳能转换和集成电路的更有效和更便宜的器件，这将是该项目的长期应用，将对实现低碳经济产生明显的影响，这是目前EPSRC的主要主题之一。因此，该项目与EPSRC的职权范围非常相关。

Plastic electronics encompasses the materials science, chemistry and physics of molecular electronic materials and the application of such materials to displays, lighting, flexible thin film electronics, solar energy conversion and sensors. The field is a growth area, nationally and globally, evidenced by the rapidly expanding organic display and printed electronics industries. Such a rapid pace of progress in organic thin-film electronics stems from the ease of processing and patterning of organic compounds, plus prospects for large-area deposition and low-cost. To ensure further progress of organic electronics and thus establishing it as a next generation technology requires an improvement in our ability to control the microstructures of solution-processed films, which, in turn, relies upon our fundamental understanding of the impact of these microstructures on optoelectronic and charge transport properties. The dependence of device performance on the microstructures of organic semiconductors (OSCs) and the factors affecting the development of specific microstructures in thin films are still poorly established and require urgent attention. The proposed research seeks to provide key fundamental and technological insights into this issue. We aim to control the microstructure of OSCs in terms of molecular order, orientation and alignment through solution processing. We targets to elucidate the important parameters during processing that impact the OSC microstructures and thus to identify the relationships between these microstructures and optoelectronic properties of OSCs. Particular attention will be paid to control the microstructure of OSCs (small molecules and conjugated polymers) with different packing structures to understand the role of chemical structures and packing motifs of molecules on the formation of thin film microstructures. Solution processing of advanced device architectures such as blends and multilayers with various length scales controlled will also be attempted to fabricate highly ambitious all printed, flexible, large area organic electronic devices. Three major impacts are expected from this project; (i) to reveal the crucial structure-property relationships of functional molecular materials, (ii) to establish a solution based printing method as a tool to control the microstructures of functional molecular materials, which can be optimised for various optoelectronic devices and (iii) to fabricate more efficient and cheaper devices for solar energy conversion and integrated circuits, which will be a long-term application of the project, will have a clear impact on the achievement of a low-carbon economy, which is currently one of EPSRC's major themes. Therefore, this project is of great relevance to the EPSRC remit.