Intrinsically Elastic Semiconductors through Aldehyde–Amine Polycondensation and Its Application on Stretchable Transistor

With the increasing demand for elastic electronics, as a crucial component, elastic semiconductors have been widely studied. However, there are some issues for the current preparation of elastic semiconductors, such as harsh reaction conditions, low atomic economic utilization, and complicated product separation and purification. Aldehyde–amine polycondensation is an important chemical reaction with the advantages of mild reaction conditions, high atomic–economic efficiency, and easy separation and purification. Herein, intrinsically elastic semiconductors are developed via aldehyde–amine polycondensation, including a semiconducting segment and an elastic segment. The resulting polymer containing 42.62 wt % soft segments exhibits excellent stretchability and mechanical reversibility, especially with a lower modulus. Interestingly, the carrier mobility displays up to 0.04 cm²·V^–1·s^–1, in the range of the fully conjugated reference polymer (0.1 cm²·V^–1·s^–1). In brief, this strategy provides important guiding principles for the development of intrinsically elastic polymer semiconductors.