Double Beneficial Role of Fluorinated Fullerene Dopants on Organic Thin-Film Transistors: Structural Stability and Improved Performance

The present work assesses improved carrier injection in organic field-effect transistors by contact doping and provides fundamental insight into the multiple impacts that the dopant/semiconductor interface details have on the long-term and thermal stability of devices. We investigate donor [1]­benzothieno­[3,2-b]-[1]­benzothiophene (BTBT) derivatives with one and two octyl side chains attached to the core, therefore constituting asymmetric (BTBT-C8) and symmetric (C8-BTBT-C8) molecules, respectively. Our results reveal that films formed out of the asymmetric BTBT-C8 expose the same alkyl-terminated surface as the C8-BTBT-C8 films do. In both cases, the consequence of depositing fluorinated fullerene (C₆₀F₄₈) as a molecular p-dopant is the formation of C₆₀F₄₈ crystalline islands decorating the step edges of the underlying semiconductor film surface. We demonstrate that local work function changes along with a peculiar nanomorphology lead to the double beneficial effect of lowering the contact resistance and providing long-term and enhanced thermal stability of the devices.