Control of the Hydroquinone/Benzoquinone Redox State in High-Mobility Semiconducting Conjugated Coordination Polymers.

Conjugated coordination polymers (c-CPs) are unique organic-inorganic hybrid semiconductors with intrinsically high electrical conductivity and excellent charge carrier mobility. However, it remains a challenge in tailoring electronic structures, due to the lack of clear guidelines. Here, we develop a strategy wherein controlling the redox state of hydroquinone/benzoquinone (HQ/BQ) ligands allows for the modulation of the electronic structure of c-CPs while maintaining the structural topology. The redox-state control is achieved by reacting the ligand TTHQ (TTHQ = 1,2,4,5-tetrathiolhydroquinone) with silver acetate and silver nitrate, yielding Ag4TTHQ and Ag4TTBQ (TTBQ = 1,2,4,5-tetrathiolbenzoquinone), respectively. In spite of sharing the same topology consisting of two-dimensional Ag-S network and HQ/BQ layer, they exhibit different band gaps (1.5 eV for Ag4TTHQ and 0.5 eV for Ag4TTBQ) and conductivities (0.4 S/cm for Ag4TTHQ and 10 S/cm for Ag4TTBQ). DFT calculations reveal that these differences arise from the ligand oxidation state inhibiting energy band formation near the Fermi level in Ag4TTHQ. Consequently, Ag4TTHQ displays a high Seebeck coefficient of 330 μV/K and a power factor of 10 μW/m·K2, surpassing Ag4TTBQ and the other reported silver-based c-CPs. Furthermore, terahertz spectroscopy demonstrates high charge mobilities exceeding 130 cm2/V·s in both Ag4TTHQ and Ag4TTBQ.