A Water-Dispersible Quinoid-Resonant Conducting Polymer for Organic Electronics

• Main Authors: Dafei Yuan, Xiaozhang Zhu
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Georg Thieme Verlag 2020-07-01
• Series: Organic Materials
• Subjects: conducting polymers; solution-processed; electronic devices; organic thermoelectric materials; energy conversion
• Online Access: http://www.thieme-connect.de/DOI/DOI?10.1055/s-0040-1714145

Abstract Developing stable and solution-processable highly conductive polymers has been the research goal in organic electronics since the first demonstration of metallic conductive polyacetylene. Here, we used a unique quinoid-resonant building block thieno[3,4-b]thiophene (TbT) to develop a new water-dispersible conducting polymer, PTbT-Me:PSS. Linear polymerization and large surfactant counterion, poly(styrenesulfonate) (PSS−), were introduced, which enabled a high electrical conductivity of 68 S cm−1 and exhibited water-dispersible property. Interchain bipolaron was found in PTbT-Me:PSS when compared with polaron in PEDOT:PSS in their conducting mechanism. Moreover, we applied this highly conductive PTbT-Me:PSS as the solution-processed polymer thermoelectric material and a decent power factor of 3.1 μW m−1 K−2 was achieved.