Nathaniel Schuster

All Publications

• Ionic Liquid-Mediated Route to Atomic Layer Deposition of Tin(II) Oxide via a C-C Bond Cleavage Ligand Modification Mechanism. Journal of the American Chemical Society Shi, J., Seo, S., Schuster, N. J., Kim, H., Bent, S. F. 2022

  Abstract

  Atomic layer deposition (ALD) is a technologically important method to grow thin films with high conformality and excellent thickness control from vapor phase precursors. The development of new thermal ALD processes can be limited by precursor reactivity and stability: reaction temperature and precursor design are among the few variables available to achieve higher reactivity in gas-phase reactions, unlike in solution synthesis, where the use of solvent and/or a catalyst can promote a desired reaction. To bridge this synthesis gap between vapor-phase and solution-phase, we demonstrate the use of an ultrathin coating layer of a vapor phase-compatible solvent─an ionic liquid (IL)─on our growth substrate to perform ALD of SnO. Successful SnO deposition is achieved using tin acetylacetonate and water, a process that otherwise would require a stronger counter-reactant such as ozone. The presence of the layer of IL allows a solvent-mediated reaction mechanism to take place on the growth substrate surface. We report a growth per cycle of 0.67 A/cycle at a deposition temperature of 100 °C in an IL comprising 1-ethyl-3-methylimidazolium hydrogen sulfate. Characterization of the ALD films confirms the SnO film composition, and 1H and 13C NMR are used to probe the solvent-mediated ALD reaction, suggesting a solvent-mediated addition-elimination-type mechanism which breaks a C-C bond in acetylacetonate to form acetone and acetate. Density functional theory calculations show that the IL solvent is beneficial to the proposed solvent-mediated mechanism by lowering the C-C bond cleavage energetics of acetylacetonate compared to the vapor phase. A general class of ligand modification reactions for thermal ALD is thus introduced in this work.

  View details for DOI 10.1021/jacs.2c10257

  View details for PubMedID 36378111

• Modular Synthesis of Fully Degradable Imine-Based Semiconducting p-Type and n-Type Polymers CHEMISTRY OF MATERIALS Tran, H., Nikzad, S., Chiong, J. A., Schuster, N. J., Pena-Alcantara, A. E., Feig, V. R., Zheng, Y., Bao, Z. 2021; 33 (18): 7465-7474

  View details for DOI 10.1021/acs.chemmater.1c02258

  View details for Web of Science ID 000703532600031

• A Design Strategy for Intrinsically Stretchable High-Performance Polymer Semiconductors: Incorporating Conjugated Rigid Fused-Rings with Bulky Side Groups. Journal of the American Chemical Society Liu, D., Mun, J., Chen, G., Schuster, N. J., Wang, W., Zheng, Y., Nikzad, S., Lai, J., Wu, Y., Zhong, D., Lin, Y., Lei, Y., Chen, Y., Gam, S., Chung, J. W., Yun, Y., Tok, J. B., Bao, Z. 2021

  Abstract

  Strategies to improve stretchability of polymer semiconductors, such as introducing flexible conjugation-breakers or adding flexible blocks, usually result in degraded electrical properties. In this work, we propose a concept to address this limitation, by introducing conjugated rigid fused-rings with optimized bulky side groups and maintaining a conjugated polymer backbone. Specifically, we investigated two classes of rigid fused-ring systems, namely, benzene-substituted dibenzothiopheno[6,5-b:6',5'-f]thieno[3,2-b]thiophene (Ph-DBTTT) and indacenodithiophene (IDT) systems, and identified molecules displaying optimized electrical and mechanical properties. In the IDT system, the polymer PIDT-3T-OC12-10% showed promising electrical and mechanical properties. In fully stretchable transistors, the polymer PIDT-3T-OC12-10% showed a mobility of 0.27 cm2 V-1 s-1 at 75% strain and maintained its mobility after being subjected to hundreds of stretching-releasing cycles at 25% strain. Our results underscore the intimate correlation between chemical structures, mechanical properties, and charge carrier mobility for polymer semiconductors. Our described molecular design approach will help to expedite the next generation of intrinsically stretchable high-performance polymer semiconductors.

  View details for DOI 10.1021/jacs.1c04984

  View details for PubMedID 34284578