Herein, thin film and single crystal phototransistors based on 2,6-bis(4-methoxyphenyl)anthracene (BOPAnt) are systematically studied. High quality BOPAnt single crystals are grown via the PVT (physical vapor transport) method to fabricate bottom gate top contact phototransistors. The thin film phototransistor shows a photoresponsivity of 9.75 A W⁻¹ under 1 mW cm⁻² blue LED illumination, whereas under the same conditions the single crystal based phototransistor displays a photoresponsivity of 414 A W⁻¹. Furthermore, using low power monochromatic light with the wavelength of 350 nm, the photoresponsivity of 3100 A W⁻¹ under 0.11 mW cm⁻² illumination and EQE of 9.5 × 10⁵% are obtained for the BOPAnt single crystal phototransistor with the channel length of 65 μm. The much higher photoresponsivity of the single crystal based phototransistor is due to its much higher exciton diffusion length compared to that of the thin film device, which is also evident by the large V_on shift towards the positive voltage direction. The photoswitching behaviors of the single crystal based phototransistor are also studied. It is observed that after a short warming up period, the single crystal based phototransistor shows stable switching behavior.

Introduction of highly lipophilic electron withdrawing trifluoromethanesulfenyl (SCF ₃ ) group is an effective approach to improve the air stability of n-channel organic thin film transistors.

In-plane isotropic charge transport single crystal FET with mobility exceeding 15 cm ² V ⁻¹ s ⁻¹ is obtained, the result is desirable in large-area single-crystal FET arrays.

This study reports two novel n-channel pyromellitic diimide (PyDI) derivatives, PyDI-BOCF₃ and PyDI-BSCF₃, with particularly wide energy gaps of 3.56 eV and 3.49 eV in the solid state, respectively, which induce the investigations of their charge transport properties, photostabilities and thin-film transparency of organic field-effect transistors (OFETs) in this work. Although PyDI-BOCF₃ and PyDI-BSCF₃ exhibit similar two-dimensional (2D) lamellar packing motifs, PyDI-BSCF₃ demonstrates stronger electronic couplings than those of PyDI-BSCF₃, suggesting it may show better electrical performance in OFETs. As predicted, PyDI-BSCF₃ shows an electron mobility of 0.09 cm² V⁻¹ s⁻¹ at a deposition temperature of 70 °C in ambient air, which is higher than the electron mobility of 0.058 cm² V⁻¹ s⁻¹, obtained for PyDI-BOCF₃. In contrast, PyDI-BOCF₃ exhibits better thermal stability of mobility, which was maintained at ∼0.056 cm² V⁻¹ s⁻¹ after increasing the deposition temperature from room temperature (RT) to 70 °C. More importantly, it is worth mentioning that the wide energy gaps of PyDI-BOCF₃ and PyDI-BSCF₃ lead to excellent photostability in OFETs at illumination conditions and optical transparency in the visible range even better than that of DPh-BTBT thin films on transparent glass and flexible PET substrates.