Charge transport physics of a unique class of rigid-rod conjugated polymers

In a new report now published on Science Advances, Mingfei Xiao and a team of interdisciplinary and international scientists in the U.K., Saudi Arabia, Australia, India, China and Belgium, investigated the charge transport physics of a previously unidentified class of conjugated polymers. Such polymers are expected to behave as rigid rods, however, not much is known of their actual chain conformation and electronic structure. In this work, Xiao et al. detailed a study of the structural and charge transport properties of a family of four such polymers based on anthracene-derived (AN1 and AN2) and naphthalene-derived (NN1 and NN2) systems. By adopting copolymer designs, the team achieved high electron mobilities of up to 0.5 cm2V-1S-1. This work provides important insights into the factor limiting charge transport in this unique class of polymers to allow the identification of molecular strategies to achieve higher levels of performance.