Ion-backbone accessibility enables unity doping efficiency in organic electrochemical transistors.

Authors

Won Jun Pyo, Kyeong-Jun Jeong, Jordan Shanahan, Justin Neu, Junseo Kim, Xiaowei Zhong, Chang Yun Son, Wei You, Dae Sung Chung

Published in

Nature communications. Jul 14, 2026. Epub Jul 14, 2026.

Abstract

Organic electrochemical transistors are commonly benchmarked using volumetric capacitance (C*); however, this metric does not distinguish between Faradaic and non-Faradaic contributions and therefore does not directly quantify the density of electronically active charge carriers that governs device-relevant doping capacity. Here we introduce effective volumetric capacitance (C_eff* = C* · η), where η denotes doping efficiency, as a metric for electronically effective volumetric doping. Using this metric, we show ionophilic side chains promote high ionic uptake but also sequester ions away from the conjugated backbone, lowering doping efficiency. By contrast, side-chain removal increases ion access to electrochemically addressable backbone sites, enabling doping efficiencies approaching unity. The resulting materials exhibited both enhanced volumetric charge density and improved charge transport, yielding transistors with transconductance among the highest reported. These results establish a practical design rule for organic mixed conductors by showing that electronically effective doping, rather than ionic uptake alone, governs transistor operation.

PMID:
42448679
Bibliographic data and abstract were imported from PubMed on 15 Jul 2026.

Read full publication at:
Please sign in to see all details.

Stats

1-terrible, 9-excellent. How would you rate this publication? Sign in in to submit your rating.

Post a comment

You need to be signed in to post comments. You can sign in here.

Comments

There are no comments yet.