ABSTRACT
Owing to their large-area and easy processing on flexible substrates, polymer thin film transistors (OTFT) have generated great interest for applications in displays, printed circuits or integrated sensors. Over the past years, advances have been made in designing novel classes of conjugated polymers routinely exhibiting benchmark field-effect (FET) mobilities above 1 cm2/Vs. For widespread applications in both scientific and industrial settings, however, there remain a range of challenges that still have to be overcome; these include understanding the role and origin of low environmental and stress stabilities, energetic disorder, device non-uniformity or the nonideality of device characteristics leading to an inflation of reported charge carrier mobilities. In this chapter, we review these challenges and look at what needs to be done for them to be to successfully addressed and overcome. We also take a look at state-of the-art polymer design concepts and review routes towards next generations of polymer OFET materials.
