2,6-Diarylnaphtho[1,8-bc:5,4-b′c′]dithiophenes as new high-performance semiconductors for organic field-effect transistors

A series of 2,6-diaryl-substituted naphtho[1,8-bc:5,4-b′c′] dithiophene derivatives 2-6, whose aryl groups include 5-hexyl-2-thienyl, 2,2′-bithiophen-5-yl, phenyl, 2-naphthyl, and 4-biphenylyl, was synthesized by the palladium-catalyzed Suzuki-Miyaura coupling and utilized as active layers of organic field-effect transistors (OFETs). All devices fabricated using vapor-deposited thin films of these compounds showed typical p-type FET characteristics. The mobilities are relatively good and widely range from 10^-4 to 10^-1 cm² V^-1 s ^-1, depending on the substituent groups. Among them, the mobilities of the devices using films of 3-5 tend to increase with the increasing temperature of the Si/SiO₂ substrate during film deposition. In particular, the device based on the naphthyl derivative 5, when fabricated at 140°C, marked a high mobility of 0.11 cm² V^-1 s ^-1 with an on/off ratio of 10⁵, which is a top class of performance among organic thin-film transistors. Studies of X-ray diffractograms (XRDs) have revealed that the film of 4 and 5 is composed of two kinds of crystal grains with different phases, so-called "single-crystal phase" and "thin film phase", and that the proportion of the thin film phase increases with an increase of the substrate temperature. In the thin film phase the assembled molecules stand nearly upright on the substrate in such a way as to be favorable to carrier migration.