Understanding The Device Stability Through The Lens of Semiconductive Polymer’s Chain Dynamics

Organic semiconducting polymers were widely studied due to their unique optoelectronic and mechanical property. They are the key component in various functional electronic devices, such as organic photovoltaic devices, flexible displays, wearable sensors, neuromorphic computing, and more recently bioelectronics. Despite tremendous progress being made in improving the charge carrier mobility and optimizing energy bandgap, the conjugated polymer's physical property was not widely studied, particularly the glass transition phenomenon. However, it is important for device stability, preventing wide adoption of polymer-based organic devices.<br/><br/>In my talk, I will outline past works on studying the polymer dynamics for semiconductive polymers and provide an overview of our effort in this area using a wide range of unique characterization tools, from thin film to bulk. I will discuss the challenge associated with accurately measuring the glass transition temperature for rigid conjugated polymers. I will also discuss our approach to address this challenge using thin-film calorimetry and ellipsometry tools, as well as using molecular dynamic simulation and cheminformatics to accurately predict the glass transition temperature. Lastly, I will cover how dynamics could impact thin film morphology and device performance at different operation temperatures and should be carefully considered when designing new polymers and devices.