Exploiting supramolecular chemistry for self-healing organic semiconductors Bob Schroeder , Megan M. Westwood, Peter A Gilhooly-Finn, Lewis M. Cowen and Bob C. Schroeder Department of Chemistry, University College London, London WC1H 0AJ, UK Material degradation is a primary concern to every material scientist and engineer, not only does degradation lead to failure, but results in the need for repair – a very costly endeavour. It is therefore of interest to develop self-healing materials that will make maintenance redundant. As opposed to inorganic semiconductors, organic semiconducting materials have low Young’s moduli, which makes them ideal to be used in wearable electronic devices, which can be directly applied to the human skin. [1] Wearable electronics, however, are particularly susceptible to environmental stresses, such as mechanical damage, chemical attack, temperature fluctuations and radiation damage. This constant stress can lead to the degradation of the chemical structure, resulting in the degradation and ultimately the loss of the material’s physical properties. Herein, we will discuss our approach to compensate the loss of physical properties, by developing intrinsically self-healing polymers. This was achieved by exploiting supramolecular chemistry concepts such as intramolecular hydrogen bonds. [2-4] In order to gain a deeper insight into the effects of the hydrogen bonding on the viscoelastic, as well as on the electrical properties of the organic semiconductors, we developed two sets of materials; (1) a conjugated polymer with hydrogen bonding functionality and (2) a composite material comprised of a conjugated polymer embedded in a self-healing polysiloxane matrix. We will discuss the effects of the different approaches on the charge transport and self-healing capabilities and outline how we can take advantage of the observed differences to tune not only the electronic, but also the self-healing and mechanical properties of the material depending on the field of application and its specific requirements. References 1. J. Y. Oh & Z. Bao, Advanced Science, 2019, 6, 1900186. 2. J. Y. Oh et al., Nature, 2016, 539, 411-415
3. A. Gasperini et al., Macromolecules, 2019, 52, 2476-2486. 4. J. Ma et al., Nature Communications, 2021, 12, 5210
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