Incorporation of 2,6-connected azulene units into the backbone of conjugated polymers: towards high-performance organic optoelectronic materials

Azulene is a promising candidate for constructing optoelectronic materials. An effective strategy is presented to obtain high-performance conjugated polymers by incorporating 2,6-connected azulene units into the polymeric backbone, and two conjugated copolymers P(TBAzDI-TPD) and P(TBAzDI-TFB) were designed and synthesized based on this strategy. They are the first two examples for 2,6-connected azulene-based conjugated polymers and exhibit unipolar n-type transistor performance with an electron mobility of up to 0.42 cm² V⁻¹ s⁻¹, which is among the highest values for n-type polymeric semiconductors in bottom-gate top-contact organic field-effect transistors. Preliminary all-polymer solar cell devices with P(TBAzDI-TPD) as the electron acceptor and PTB7-Th as the electron donor display a power conversion efficiency of 1.82 %.