Partially removing long branched alkyl side chains of regioregular conjugated backbone based diketopyrrolopyrrole polymer for improving field-effect mobility

Abstract

The efficient design and synthesis of new tert-butoxycarbonyl (t-Boc) and t-Boc-removed diketopyrrolopyrrole (DPP) polymers with regioregular conjugated backbones via a new route of combining random copolymerization and the classical t-Boc precursor approach are reported. The resulting new type of DPP polymer, named P(40/1)-H, is found to possess good solubility, film-forming ability, and reasonable optoelectronic properties. Importantly, it displays a significantly improved field-effect mobility (∼0.91 cm² V⁻¹ s⁻¹) as compared to the recognized reference polymer P(100/0) (∼0.56 cm² V⁻¹ s⁻¹), which indicates partially removing the long branched alkyl side chains of a regioregular conjugated backbone based DPP polymer is an alternative new strategy of molecular design for enhancing field-effect carrier mobility.