Control of the aggregated structure of conjugated polymer films for high-performance intrinsically stretchable...

Intrinsically stretchable organic field-effect transistors (OFETs) exhibit great potential in artificial skin, functional circuits, conformable sensors, and other related fields. As critical layers for intrinsically stretchable OFETs, conjugated polymer films are expected to simultaneously achieve high charge mobility and excellent elastic stretchability. In many cases, a high mobility requires conjugated polymer films to have a good crystallinity, which is detrimental to their elasticity. Therefore, the control of the aggregated structure of conjugated polymer films is necessary to achieve a balanced charge mobility and deformability. In this feature article, we focus on how to tune the aggregated structure of conjugated polymers to achieve intrinsically stretchable OFETs with mobilities approaching or exceeding 1.0 cm² V^-1 s^-1 at 100% strain, including the basic principles, the common strategies, and the structure-property relationships. Since the crystallization of conjugated polymers during film formation is crucial for the resulting film structure, the crystallization mechanism behind the different strategies is emphatically discussed and systematically understood.