Organic Semiconducting Materials Based on BDOPV: Structures, Properties, and Applications

What are the major current research activities of your group? To develop high performance organic semiconducting and conducting materials and also to understand their structure-property relationships. We are also interested in the effect of the aggregation states of the conjugated polymers on their electronic properties, the doping process and mechanism. What is the most important personality for scientific research? Curiosity and the desire to learn. Meanwhile, one should enjoy and be happy in the process of scientific exploration. Could you please share some experiences with young researchers in starting up their career? Keeping in mind that doing research is never a torturous course but always a process with pleasure, during which your curiosity gets satisfied and you can better understand about the science under the experiment. Meanwhile, one will get a sense of achievement whenever you solve a problem or overcome the challenge. How do you supervise your students? A supervise should share joys and tears with them, and give them a hand when they need help. What's your hobbies? I enjoy anything that makes me think, like reading. And I prefer cooking. Which kinds of journals do you think are outstanding journals? There is no need for us to evaluate a commercialized journal. One should focus on the research process they are conducting instead of the publications. Organic semiconductors have achieved remarkable development due to their promising applications in low-cost, lightweight, and flexible electronics. Both n-type and p-type semiconductors with comparable performance are necessary for high quality p-n junctions, complementary circuits. However, compared with their p-type counterparts, in which the hole mobilities are even up to 40 cm(2)center dot V-1 center dot s(-1), only few n-type semiconductors exhibited electron mobilities surpassing 1 cm(2)center dot V-1 center dot s(-1). Recently, benzodifurandione- based oligo(p-phenylene vinylene) (BDOPV)-based small molecules and polymers have exhibited outstanding electronic performance and ambient-stability: the highest electron mobility is up to 14.9 cm(2)center dot V-1 center dot s(-1). In addition, BDOPV-based polymers exhibit great potential applications in thermoelectric devices, biomedicine, etc. In this review, we provide a comprehensive insight into BDOPV derivatives from rational design, structure-property relationships, morphology control, and their applications.