Synthesis of Poly(furfuryl methacrylate) via Living Anionic Polymerization and Application to Thin Film Transistor Gate Dielectric

Abstract

Poly(furfuryl methacrylate (PFMA) is an interesting material because of the presence of the furan group as the reactive diene functionality. However, PFMA cannot be polymerized by conventional radical polymerization due to the side reaction, where radicals attack the reactive furfuryl group in the polymer and in the monomer. Here, we have successfully synthesized gel-free PFMA using two anionic initiator systems such as DPM/ZnEt2 and s-BuLi/DPE/LiCl. PFMA had well-controlled molecular weight and narrow molecular weight distribution (Mw/Mn = 1.02-1.05). Sequential block copolymer with MMA was carried out, and block copolymers of PFMA-b-PMMA and PMMA-b-PFMA were quantitatively synthesized. Secondly, PFMA with low crosslinking temperature property was applied to the dielectric material of Organic Thin Film Transistor. The cross-linked polymers reacted with bismaleimde at low temperature (70 °C) and PFMA had dielectric constants of about 3, and have excellent insulation properties (10-8Acm-2 at 1MV cm-1) in conjunction with areal capacitance (27.7 nF cm-2 at 10 kHz, 115nm thick). We fabricated TFT with a bottom gate top contact structure on a SiO2 100 nm substrate using cross-linked polymer as the gate dielectric. Finally, OTFT fabricated on the PET substrate displayed performance with decent mobility (0.103cm2/Vs).