The impact of diperfluorophenyl and thienyl substituents on the electronic structures and charge transport properties of the fused thiophene semiconductors

The charge transport properties of 3 fused thiophene semiconductors, end-capped with diperfluorophenylthien-2-yl (DFPT) groups (DFPT-thieno[2′, 3′:4, 5]thieno[3, 2-b]thieno[2, 3-d]thiophene (TTA), DFPT-dithieno[2, 3-b:3′, 2′-d]thiophenes (DTT), and DFPT-thieno[3, 2-b]thiophene (TT)), are explored via density functional theory (DFT). To gain a better understanding of the impact of diperfluorophenyl and thienyl substituents on the electronic structures and charge transport properties of these molecules, the geometric structures, reorganization energy, frontier molecular orbitals, molecular ionization potentials and electron affinities, absorption spectra of the corresponding molecules including diperfluorophenyl (DFP)-TTA, DFP-DTT, DFP-TT, dithienyl (DT)-TTA, DT-DTT, DT-TT as well as their parent molecules (TTA, DTT and TT) are investigated for comparison. The calculated results show that introducing perfluorophenyl groups to the fused thiophenes could be a good strategy to promote electron transport, while the insertion of additional thiophene rings to DFP-end-capped derivatives could further extend the π-conjugation and enhance the charge transport properties of DFPT-end-capped analogs.