Ultrathin film with thickness below 15 nm of organic semiconductors provides excellent platform for some fundamental research and practical applications in the field of organic electronics. However, it is quite challenging to develop a general principle for the growth of uniform and continuous ultrathin film over large area. Dip-coating is a useful technique to prepare diverse structures of organic semiconductors, but the assembly of organic semiconductors in dip-coating is quite complicated, and there are no reports about the core rules for the growth of ultrathin film via dip-coating until now. In this work, we develop a general strategy for the growth of ultrathin film of organic semiconductor via dip-coating, which provides a relatively facile model to analyze the growth behavior. The balance between the three direct factors (nucleation rate, assembly rate, and recession rate) is the key to determine the growth of ultrathin film. Under the direction of this rule, ultrathin films of four organic semiconductors are obtained. The field-effect transistors constructed on the ultrathin film show good field-effect property. This work provides a general principle and systematic guideline to prepare ultrathin film of organic semiconductors via dip-coating, which would be highly meaningful for organic electronics as well as for the assembly of other materials via solution processes.

Two copolymers of P1 and P2 comprising benzothiadiazole, 1,4-bis(dodecyloxy)-benzene units were synthesized by Sonogashira coupling polymerization based on ethynyl-linked 1,2,5,6-naphthalenediimide. Their thermal, optical, electrochemical as well as charge transport properties were studied. Bottom-gate top-contact organic field-effect transistors (OFETs) measurements of P1 and P2 thin films showed different charge transport behaviors. P1 displayed pure electron transport behaviors in OFETs with electron mobility up to 10−3 cm2·V−1·s−1, while P2 exhibited hole transport features. The molecular structure analysis revealed that the structure of P1 has the acceptor-linker-acceptor′ (A-L-A′) characteristic, and P2 possesses the donor-linker-acceptor (D-L-A) structure feature. The results demonstrate that different molecular structures lead them to have distinct charge transport behaviors. In particular, the first pure electron transport copolymer in OFETs based on 1,2,5,6-naphthalenediimide is achieved.