Investigation of Self-Assembly and Charge-Transport Property of One-dimensional PDI8-CN2 Nanowires by Solvent-Vapor Annealing

Abstract

One-dimensional (1D) nanowires have attracted great interest, while air-stable n-type 1D nanowires still remain scarce. Herein, we present solvent-vapor annealing (SVA) made nanowires based on perylene tetracarboxylic diimide (PDI) derivative. It was found that the spin-coated thin films reorganized into nanowires distributed all over the substrate, as a result of the following solvent-vapor annealing effect. Cooperating with the atomic force microscopy and fluorescence microscopy characterization, the PDI8-CN2 molecules were supposed to conduct a long-range and entire transport to form the 1D nanowires through the SVA process, which may guarantee its potential morphology tailoring ability. In addition, the nanowire-based transistors displayed air stable electron mobility reaching to 0.15 cm2 V−1 s−1, attributing to effective in situ reassembly. Owing to the broader application of organic small-molecule nanowires, this work opens up an attractive approach for exploring new high-performance micro- and nanoelectronics.