KES12-0268
Atom-efficient synthesis of indacenodithiophene (IDT)-based polymers and their charge transport properties
Topic
S12. Women in Renewable Energy and Sustainability (WiRES) 2026
When and Where
Sep 30, 2026
15:00 - 15:25
Room 204
Session Chairs
Annalisa BRUNO
Presenter(s)
Christine Luscombe (Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology)
Co-Author(s)
Abstract
Designing soft electronic materials requires a detailed understanding of how molecular packing, charge-carrier delocalization, and mechanical deformability interact within conjugated polymers. Indacenodithiophene (IDT)-based materials are highly promising for these applications due to their rigid, coplanar cores that facilitate excellent charge transport. However, developing these semiconductors requires balancing electronic performance and mechanical robustness while maintaining efficient macromolecular processing. Here, we investigate the structure–property–performance relationships of a series of IDT-based terpolymers synthesized via atom-efficient direct arylation polymerization (DArP), containing controlled ratios of thienopyrroledione (TPD) and benzothiadiazole (BT) acceptor units. Grazing-incidence wide-angle X-ray scattering (GIWAXS) reveals progressively enhanced backbone translational order with increasing BT content, whereas charge-modulation spectroscopy indicates reduced polaron delocalization across the same series. In organic field-effect transistors (OFETs), these structural shifts manifest as a composition-dependent mobility trend, featuring a minimum at intermediate compositions and recovery in BT-rich polymers. These observations point to a transport crossover from a stronger intrachain contribution in TPD-rich films to an increased intermolecular contribution in BT-rich domains. Furthermore, mechanical testing reveals that this increasing structural order decreases the crack-onset strain from approximately 90% to 45%. Ultimately, this study demonstrates that managing terpolymer composition is a powerful strategy for finely tuning the balance between charge transport and stretchability in conjugated semiconductors.
