Organic field-effect transistors based on semiconducting porphyrin single crystals

Porphyrin offers a variety of optical, electrochemical, and catalytic properties from the central metal and structural modifications. However, porphyrins have been relatively less investigated for their semiconducting properties. In this work, we report on the design and synthesis of new solution processable semiconducting porphyrins 2TBPH and 2TBPZ. They contain two 5-hexylthiophen-2-yl ethynyl phenyl arms and produce smooth films and high quality single-crystals. The single-crystal field effect transistors from 2TBTZ show a maximum field effect mobility of ∼0.36 cm2 V−1 s−1 with a high current on/off ratio of 2 × 103. Remarkably, the mobilities of single-crystal devices are two orders higher than those of thin-film based transistor devices.

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► New class of π-extended porphyrin derivatives has been successfully synthesized.
► Single crystalline wires were able to obtain from slow diffusion technique.
► The OFET devices based on porphyrins show excellent mobilities.
► Single-crystal devices show much higher mobilities over thin-film devices.