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Ambipolar polymer semiconductors are potentially serviceable for logic circuits, light-emitting field-effect transistors (LFETs) and polymer solar cells (PSCs). Although several high-performance ambipolar polymers have been developed, their optoelectronic devices are generally processed from toxic chlorinated solvents. To achieve the commercial applications of organic FETs (OFETs), the polymers should be processed from nonchlorinated solvents, instead of chlorinated solvents. However, most conjugated polymers show poor solubility in nonchlorinated solvents. It is of great importance to develop ambipolar polymers that can be processed from nonchlorinated solvents. Here, we develop a nonchlorinated solvent processed polymer named poly[7-fluoro-N, N′-di(4-decyltetradecyl)-7′-azaisoindigo-6′,6″-(thieno[3,2-b]thiophene-2,5-diyl)-7‴-fluoro-N″, N‴-di(4-decyltetradecyl)-7″-azaisoindigo-6,6‴-([2,2″-bithiophene]-5,5″-diyl)] (PITTI-BT) by designing a monomer with a large molar mass. The polymer displays good solubility in p-xylene (PX). Well-aligned films of PITTI-BT are achieved by an off-center spin-coating (SC) method. Based on the high-quality films, the OFETs fabricated from PX solution achieve record ambipolar performance with hole and electron mobilities of 3.06 and 2.81 cm2 V−1 s−1, respectively. The combination of nonchlorinated solvents and good alignment process offers an effective and eco-friendly approach to obtain high-performance ambipolar transistors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Biosensors based on carbon nanotube field-effect transistors (CNT-FETs) have shown great potential in biomarker detection due to their high sensitivity because of appreciable semiconducting electrical properties. However, background signal interferences in complex mediums may results in low signal-to-noise ratio, which may impose challenges for precise biomarker detection in physiological fluids. In this work, we develop an enzymatic CNT-FET, with scalable production at wafer scale, for detection of trace sarcosine that is a biopsy-correlated biomarker of prostate cancer. Enzymatic cascade rectors are constructed on the CNT to improve the reaction efficiency, thereby, enhancing the signal transduction. As such, a limit of detection as low as 105 zM is achieved in buffer solution. Owing to the enhanced reaction efficiency, the testing of clinical serum samples yields significant signal difference to discriminate the prostate cancer (PCa) samples from the benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH) samples (P = 1.07 × 10−5), demonstrating immense potential in practical applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]