Institut Charles Sadron Event

This thesis is dedicated to develop thermoelectrically efficient and long-term stable aligned thiophene based polymer films. High-temperature rubbing and sequential doping techniques are used to process doped aligned polythiophene films. In the first chapter, the impact of regioregularity on the structure-property relationship of F4TCNQ-doped rub-aligned P3HT films is investigated. It is experimentally shown that crystal phase doping with F4TCNQ enhances charge conductivity by a factor of 50 when regioregularity is increased from 71% to 97%. The second chapter introduces a novel incremental concentration anion exchange doping method to incorporate TFSI-salt into oriented regioregular P3HT films, aiming to achieve high thermoelectric performance with long-term stability. A multi-technique approach is used to quasi-quantitatively demonstrates that the distribution of dopants within the semi-crystalline polymer P3HT (whether confined to crystalline, amorphous, or both phases) determines the long-term stability of the doped polymer films. In the final chapter, a record alignment level (dichroic ratio > 50) is achieved using siloxane side chains on a PBTTT backbone with a similar HOMO energy level. Phase-selective p-type dopants (F6TCNNQ and Magic Blue) are used to investigate the impact of side chains on the thermoelectric performance among three PBTTT polymers with different side chains. This study demonstrates that both, chemical nature of side chains and semi-crystalline structure of the polymer determine the efficacy of doping that is not solely controlled by ?E=EA-IP.