Structural, spectroscopic and passivation properties of a novel binuclear clamshell-type zinc(II) phthalocyanine as gate dielectric for OFET

A novel clamshell-type binuclear zinc(II) phthalocyanine (2) was synthesized by cross condensation of the bisphthalonitrile (1) with 4-tert-butylphthalonitrile and zinc acetate in 1:10:4 ratio. The structure of the novel compound was characterized by elemental analysis, UV-vis, FT-IR (ATR), HR MALDI-TOF mass, 1H NMR, 13C DEPT NMR and 1H-1H COSY NMR methods. Applying electronic absorption spectroscopy and density functional theory (DFT) revealed that in THF the geometry of 2 is twisted to adopt an intermediate clamshell conformation in which the spacing between the Zn centers is about 8.1Å, providing a very good account of the observed spectrum exhibiting the characteristic B (Soret) band at 347 nm and the Q band at 673 nm. In solution, 2 was found to exist in non-aggregated form. The calculated fluorescence quantum yields (φF = 0.23 in THF and 0.10 in DMF) were relatively reduced in comparison to that of std ZnPc. In particular, understanding of leakage current conduction mechanisms in gate dielectrics is crucial for the development of field effect transistors with improved device performance. Analysis of the reverse bias current-voltage data indicated that the origin of leakage current conduction mechanisms in clamshell-type zinc(II) phthalocyanine is Poole-Frenkel emission. The capacitance density of 12.7 nF cm-2 at 5 Hz. and 12.1 nF cm-2 at 13 MHz was obtained with the FTO/Pc/Au sandwich structure.