Progress in Fluorene-based Wide-bandgap Steric Semiconductors

Molecular bulks are favorable for the thermal and morphological stability in organic wide-bandgap semiconducting polymers with potential applications in both information and energy electronics. In this review, we present our progress in the design of fluorene-based bulky semiconductors with a fractal four-element pattern. Firstly, we established one-pot methods to spirofluorenes, especially spiro[fluorene-9,9＇-xanthene] （SFX） serving as the next-generation spiro-based semiconductors. Secondly, we observed the supramolecular forces at the bulky groups and discovered the supramolecular steric hindrance （SSH） effect on polymorphisms, nanocrystals as well as device performance. Thus, a synergistically molecular attractor-repulsor theory （SMART） was proposed for the control of nanocrystal morphology, thin film phase and morphology. Thirdly, the third possible type of defects has been identified to generate green band （g-band） emission in wide- bandgap semiconductors by the introduction of molecular strain design of cyclofluorene. Finally, the first bulky polydiarylfluorene with highly crystalline and β conformation was achieved by an attractor-repulsor design of tadpole-shape monomer, which offered an effective platform to fabricate stable wide-bandgap semiconducting devices. All the discoveries offer the solid basis to break through bottlenecks of organic/polymer wide-bandgap semiconductors by the improvements of overall performances.

Theoretical Studies on Novel Gridspiroarenes: Structures, Noncovalent Interactions and Reorganization Energies

Organic semiconductor materials with low reorganization energy have various applications such as in organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs),organic field-effect transistor (OFETs) and organic solar cells (OSCs).In this work,we have designed a new class of gridspiroarenes (GS-SFX and GS-SITF) with #-shaped structures,which have novel crisscross geometrical structures compared to widely used spirocyclic arenes-SFX and SITF.The structure electronic properties,adiabatic ionization potentials (IPa),adiabatic electron affinities (EAa) and reorganization energies (λ) of GS-SFX and GS-SITF have been calculated using density functional theory (DFT) method.The calculated HOMO and LUMO spatial distributions suggest that GS-SFX and GS-SITF have better transport properties.The noncovalent interaction analysis shows the weak intramolecular interactions between their arms.The results indicate that the reorganization energies of GS-SFX and GS-SITF are significantly reduced compared to the dimer structures-DSFX and DSITF.Furthermore,the GS-SITF1 which is one of the isomers of GS-SITF exhibits the lowest values for λ(h)(0.067 eV) and λ(e)(0.153 eV).Therefore,we believe the predicted structure,electronic property,and reorganization energy are good indicator for transport materials.This work has systematically studied the effect of gridization,which provides insights to design organic semiconductor materials with excellent charge transport properties.