Soft conjugated polymer composites are attractive for broad future semiconductor-based devices due to their inherent advantages such as lightweight, flexible shape, low-cost, ease of processability, ease of scalability, biocompatibility, etc. Similar to traditional inorganic semiconductors, the addition of certain minority dopants can significantly alter the electronic structures and properties of the host conjugated polymers or composites allowing tunability for a variety of potential applications including, but may not limited to, electronic devices (e.g., field effect transistors and related sensors), thermoelectric devices (e.g., temperature sensors, thermoelectric generators), etc. In this work, the design and working principle of a thermo-electric/field effect dual conversion and modulation composite and device are described and demonstrated. Specifically, a thermoelectrically doped P3HT composite was fabricated into a field effect transistor device, and it was observed that both gate voltage and temperature can effectively modulate the source-drain IV or on/off ratios, i.e., a potential dual sensing and modulation device is demonstrated. The results and findings of this study could be very useful to understand and to guide the design and development of future generation high efficiency molecular or polymer based multi-function sensory or modulation devices.

© (2019) COPYRIGHT Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE). Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only.

Joseph Wayne Norman, Harold O. Lee III, and Sam-Shajing Sun, "Polymer composites for potential thermo-electro dual sensors," Proc. SPIE 11096, Organic and Hybrid Sensors and Bioelectronics XII, 1109608 (Presented at SPIE Organic Photonics + Electronics: August 11, 2019; Published: 30 August 2019); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2528941.