Stretchable Mesh-Patterned Organic Semiconducting Thin Films on Creased Elastomeric Substrates

Abstract

Recently, many researchers have tried to develop stretchable semiconducting thin films that can maintain their electrical performance under stretching. However, the fabrication processes have not been sufficiently practical and feasible to be used for soft electronics. Here, a stretchable high-performance organic semiconducting thin film is fabricated by exploiting simultaneous patterning and pinning of a polymer semiconductor solution on an elastomeric substrate in which creasing-instability has occurred. As a result, a mesh-like polymer semiconducting thin film having vacant regions in the crease centers and surrounding crystalline regions near them can be fabricated. Due to the mesh-like morphology and the percolated crystalline regions, the polymer semiconducting thin film shows superior stretchability and charge-transport performance compared to the reference flat polymer thin film. When incorporated into organic thin-film transistors, the DPP-DTT polymer semiconducting thin film maintains its high field-effect carrier mobility (0.53 +/- 0.03 cm(2) (V s)(-1)) under a strain epsilon of 80% and is highly stable under repeated stretching cycles at an epsilon of 50%.