Stretchable N-Type High-Performance Polymers Based on Asymmetric Thienylvinyl-1,1-Dicyanomethylene-3-Indanone for Plastic Electronics

The development of new electron-accepting building blocks to construct high-performance n-type semiconducting polymers is essential for various organic optoelectronic devices. Herein, we have incorporated a newly formulated thienylvinyl-1,1-dicyanomethylene-3-indanone (TIC) electron-accepting monomer into a series of n-type low-band gap polymers alongside cyclopentadithiophene (CDT) and indacenodithiophene (IDT) comonomers. Controlling the regioregularity of the asymmetric TIC has produced regioisomeric polymer structures [semi-regioregular ( s -PCDT-TIC and s -PIDT-TIC) and regiorandom ( r -PCDT-TIC and r -PIDT-TIC)]. We conducted comparative studies for the regiochemistry control and CDT versus IDT repeating units: (i) The CDT-containing polymers have red-shifted absorption and higher absorptivity compared to the IDT-containing analogues. (ii) The varied regioregularity affects the opt…