Graphene is the most broadly discussed and studied two-dimensional material because of its preeminent physical, mechanical, optical, and thermal properties. Until now, metal-catalyzed chemical vapor deposition (CVD) has been widely employed for the scalable production of high-quality graphene. However, in order to incorporate the graphene into electronic devices, a transfer process from metal substrates to targeted substrates is inevitable. This process usually results in contamination, wrinkling, and breakage of graphene samples - undesirable in graphene-based technology and not compatible with industrial production. Therefore, direct graphene growth on desired semiconductor and dielectric substrates is considered as an effective alternative. Over the past years, there have been intensive investigations to realize direct graphene growth using CVD methods without the catalytic role of metals. Owing to the low catalytic activity of non-metal substrates for carbon precursor decomposition and graphene growth, several strategies have been designed to facilitate and engineer graphene fabrication on semiconductors and insulators. Here, those developed strategies for direct CVD graphene growth on semiconductors and dielectrics for transfer-free fabrication of electronic devices are reviewed. By employing these methods, various graphene-related structures can be directly prepared on desired substrates and exhibit excellent performance, providing versatile routes for varied graphene-based materials fabrication.

Recently developed chemical vapor deposition (CVD) is considered as an effective way to large-area and high-quality graphene preparation due to its ultra-low cost, high controllability, and high scalability. However, CVD-grown graphene film is polycrystalline, and composed of numerous grains separated by grain boundaries, which are detrimental to graphene-based electronics. Intensive investigations have been inspired on the controlled growth of graphene single crystals with the absence of intrinsic defects. As the two most concerned parameters, the size and morphology serve critical roles in affecting properties and understanding the growth mechanism of graphene crystals. Therefore, a precise tuning of the size and morphology will be of great significance in scale-up graphene production and wide applications. Here, recent advances in the synthesis of graphene single crystals on both metals and dielectric substrates by the CVD method are discussed. The review mainly covers the size and morphology engineering of graphene single crystals. Furthermore, recent progress in the growth mechanism and device applications of graphene single crystals are presented. Finally, the opportunities and challenges are discussed.

Organic/polymeric semiconductors are mainly composed of aromatic systems including phenyl, vinyl, alkynyl, thienyl, and other isoelectric groups, which are constructed of carbon, hydrogen, and so-called ‘hereroatoms’ including chalcogen, nitrogen, and halogen atoms etc. The introduction of heteroatoms could yield different electronic properties by influencing the molecular geometry, the HOMO and LUMO energy levels, intermolecular interactions and so on. In this Research News article, we provide a brief review of the effect of heteroatoms and recent developments in heteroatom substituted organic/polymeric semiconductors, focusing especially on their application in field-effect transistors.

“Regioselectivity deposition” method is developed to pattern silver electrodes facilely and efficiently by solution-process with high resolution (down to 2 μm) on different substrates in A4 paper size. With the help of this method, large-area, flexible, high-performance polymer field-effect transistors based on the silver electrodes and polyimide insulator are fabricated with bottom-contact configuration by all-solution processes. The polymer devices exhibit high performance with average field-effect mobility over 1.0 cm² V⁻¹ s⁻¹ (the highest mobility up to 1.5 cm² V⁻¹ s⁻¹) and excellent environmental stability and flexibility, indicating the cost effectiveness of this method for practical applications in organic electronics.

The precisely controllable growth of self-aligned single-crystal graphene grains on liquid Cu surface by ambient pressure chemical vapor deposition is reported. Large scale monolayer graphene arrays are modulated by varying growth conditions such as flow rate of carbon source, growth temperature, and growth time. Further, bilayer graphene grains are also controllably prepared under optimized growth conditions. The self-alignment mechanism of graphene is also studied and a growth model is proposed to explain that process involving surface tension of liquid phase. In all, the growth mechanism of graphene arrays is firstly probed and the grown graphene arrays show reasonable mobility and high current density, posing great potential for graphene-based electronics.

In this report, four donor–acceptor copolymers, P(NDT3-BT), P(NDT3-BO), P(NDF3-BT), and P(NDF3-BO), using 5,10-didodecyl-naphtho[1,2-b:5,6-b′]dithiophene (NDT3) or 5,10-didodecyl-naphtho[1,2-b:5,6-b′]difuran (NDF3) as an electron-rich unit and benzodiathiazole (BT) or benzoxadiazole (BO) as an electron-deficient one, were designed, synthesized, and characterized. Detailed systematical investigation was developed for studying the effect of the S/O atoms on the optical, electrochemical, and morphological properties of the polymers, as well as the subsequent performance of the organic field-effect transistors (OFETs) fabricated from these copolymers. It was found that, compared with NDF3-based P(NDF3-BT)/P(NDF3-BO), by replacing NDF3 with stronger aromatic NDT3, the resultant P(NDT3-BT)/P(NDT3-BO) show smaller lamellar distance with an increased surface roughness in solid state, and relatively higher hole mobilities are obtained. The hole mobilities of the four polymers based on OFETs varied from 0.20 to 0.32 cm² V⁻¹ s⁻¹ depending on their molecular structures, giving some valuable insights for the further design and development of a new generation of semiconducting materials. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Polym. Sci., Part A: Polym. Chem. 2014, 52, 2465–2476

Two furan-flanked polymers poly{3,6-difuran-2-yl-2,5-di(2-octyldodecyl)-pyrrolo[3,4-c]pyrrole-1,4-dione-alt-thienylenevinylene} (PDVFs), with a highly π-extended diketopyrrolopyrrole backbone, are developed for solution-processed high-performance polymer field-effect transistors (FETs). Atomic force microscopy and grazing incidence X-ray scattering analyses indicate that PDVF-8 and PDVF-10 films exhibit a similar nodular morphology with the ultrasmall lamellar distances of 16.84 and 18.98 Å, respectively. When compared with the reported polymers with the same alkyl substitutes, this is the smallest d-spacing value observed to date. This closed lamellar crystallinity facilitates charge carrier transport. Therefore, polymer thin-film transistors fabricated from as-spun PDVF-8 films exhibit a high hole mobility exceeding 1.0 cm² V⁻¹ s⁻¹ with a current on/off ratio above 10⁶. After annealing treatment at 100 °C in air, the highest hole mobility of PDVF-8-based FETs was significantly improved to 1.90 cm² V⁻¹ s⁻¹, which is among the highest values of the reported FET devices fabricated from polymer thin films based on this mild annealing temperature. In contrast, long alkyl-substituted PDVF-10 exhibited a relatively low hole mobility of 1.65 cm² V⁻¹ s⁻¹ mainly resulting from low molecular weight. This work demonstrated that PDVFs would be promising semiconductors for developing cost-effective and large-scale production of flexible organic electronics. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Polym. Sci., Part A: Polym. Chem. 2014, 52, 1970–1977

New donor–acceptor conjugated copolymers based on alkylthienylbenzodithiophene (BDTT) and alkoxynaphthodithiophene (NDT) have been synthesized and compared with their benzo[1,2-b:4,5-b′]dithiophene (BDT)-based analogues to investigate the effect of the extended π conjugation of the polymer main chain on the physicochemical properties of the polymers. A systematic investigation into the optical properties, energy levels, field-effect transistor characteristics, and photovoltaic characteristics of these polymers was conducted. Both polymers demonstrated enhanced photovoltaic performance and increased hole mobility compared with the BDT-based analogue. However, the BDTT-based polymer (with π-conjugation extension perpendicular to main chain) gave the highest power conversion efficiency of 5.07 % for the single-junction polymer solar cell, whereas the NDT-based polymer (with π-conjugation extension along the main chain) achieved the highest hole mobility of approximately 0.1 cm² V⁻¹ s⁻¹ based on the field-effect transistor; this indicated that extending the π conjugation in different orientations would have a significant influence on the properties of the resulting polymers.

In this study, we successfully designed and synthesized a novel phenanthro[1,10,9,8-c,d,e,f,g]carbazole (PCZ)-based copolymer poly[N-(2-octyldodecyl)-4,8-phenanthro[1,10,9,8-c,d,e,f,g]carbazole-alt-2,5-dihexadecyl-3,6-di(thiophen-2-yl)pyrrolo[3,4-c]pyrrole-1,4(2H,5H)-dione] (PPDPP) with an extended π-conjugation along the vertical orientation of polymer main chain. This polymer exhibited excellent solubility in common solvent and high thermal stability, owning good properties for solution-processed field-effect transistors (FETs). Besides, absorption spectra demonstrated that annealing PPDPP thin films led to obviously red-shifted maxima, indicating the formations of aggregation or orderly π–π stacking in their solid-state films. X-ray diffraction measurements indicated the crystallinity of PPDPP thin films was enhanced after high temperature annealing, which was favorable for charge transport. The solution-processed PPDPP-based FET devices were fabricated with a bottom-gate/bottom-contact geometry. A high hole mobility of up to 0.30 cm²/Vs and a current on/off ratio above 10⁵ had been demonstrated. These results indicated that the copolymers constructed by this kind of ladder-type cores could be promising organic semiconductors for high-performance FET applications. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Polym Sci Part A: Polym Chem, 2013

Functional organic field-effect transistors (OFETs) have attracted increasing attention in the past few years due to their wide variety of potential applications. Research on functional OFETs underpins future advances in organic electronics. In this review, different types of functional OFETs including organic phototransistors, organic memory FETs, organic light emitting FETs, sensors based on OFETs and other functional OFETs are introduced. In order to provide a comprehensive overview of this field, the history, current status of research, main challenges and prospects for functional OFETs are all discussed

Functional organic field-effect transistors (OFETs) have attracted increasing attention in the past few years due to their wide variety of potential applications. Research on functional OFETs underpins future advances in organic electronics. In this review, different types of functional OFETs including organic phototransistors, organic memory FETs, organic light emitting FETs, sensors based on OFETs and other functional OFETs are introduced. In order to provide a comprehensive overview of this field, the history, current status of research, main challenges and prospects for functional OFETs are all discussed

Oligoarenes as an alternative group of promising semiconductors in organic optoelectronics have attracted much attention. However, high-performance and low-cost opto-electrical devices based on linear asymmetric oligoarenes with nano/microstructures are still rarely studied because of difficulties both in synthesis and high-quality nano/microstructure growth. Here, a novel linear asymmetric oligoarene 6-methyl-anthra[2,3-b]benzo[d]thiophene (Me-ABT) is synthesized and its high-quality microribbons are grown by a solution process. The solution of Me-ABT exhibits a moderate fluorescence quantum yield of 0.34, while the microribbons show a glaucous light emission. Phototransistors based on an individual Me-ABT microribbon prepared by a solution-phase self-assembly process showed a high mobility of 1.66 cm² V⁻¹ s⁻¹, a large photoresponsivity of 12 000 A W⁻¹, and a photocurrent/dark-current ratio of 6000 even under low light power conditions (30 µW cm⁻²). The measured photoresponsivity of the devices is much higher than that of inorganic single-crystal silicon thin film transistors. These studies should boost the development of the organic semiconductors with high-quality microstructures for potential application in organic optoelectronics.