Threshold voltage modulation of polymer transistors by photoinduced charge-transfer between donor-acceptor dyads

•A photoactive conjugate polymer based on electron donor-acceptor dyads was synthesized.•Field-Effect transistors based on a photoactive polymer showed threshold voltage shift through photoinduced charge-transfer.•Charge-transfer behavior was characterized by device characterization and quantum calculation.

In this work, the photoinduced optoelectronic properties of a conjugated polymer from device characterization and quantum calculations have been studied. It was demonstrated that the photosensitive conjugated polymer with electron donor-acceptor dyad (6) which contains a terthiophene unit, can modulate charge accumulation by photoirradiation resulting in a threshold voltage shift in the polymer field-effect transistors (PFETs) while this effect of the photoinactive polymer (5) containing a thienothiophene unit is negligible. These results suggest that the feasible molecular design strategies can provide an effective platform to achieve controllable threshold voltage modulation in PFETs.