The organic electrochemical transistor (OECT) is
one of the most versatile building blocks within the bioelectronics device
toolbox. While p-type organic semiconductors have progressed as OECT channel
materials, only a few n-type semiconductors have been reported, precluding the
development of advanced sensor-integrated OECT-based complementary circuits.
Herein, green aldol polymerization is uses to synthesize lactone-based n-type
conjugated polymers. Fluorination of the lactone-based acceptor endows a fully
locked backbone with a low-lying lowest unoccupied molecular orbital, facilitating
efficient ionic-to-electronic charge coupling. The resulting polymer has a
record-high n-type OECT performance with a high product of mobility and
capacitance (µC* = 108 F cm−1 V−1 s−1), excellent mobility (0.912 cm2 V−1 s−1), low threshold
voltage (0.02 V), and fast switching speed (τON, τOFF = 336 µs,108 µs). This work demonstrates
two types of device architectures and applications enabled by the high
performance of this n-type OECT, i.e., an artificial synapse and a
complementary amplifier for detecting α-synuclein, a potential biomarker of
Parkinson's disease. This study shows that materials that enable high gain and
fast speed n-type OECTs can be developed via a green polymerization route, and
the diverse form factors that these devices take promise for exploration of
other application areas.