ABSTRACT Organic mixed ionic–electronic conductors (OMIECs), which can be used to build organic electrochemical transistors (OECTs), are of potential use in flexible, large-area and

bioelectronic systems. Although hole-transporting p-type OMIECs are susceptible to oxidation, and oxygen leads to OECT instability, it is unclear whether oxygen also behaves as an

uncontrolled p-dopant. We show that oxygen dissolved in a solvent can act as a p-dopant in OMIECs and OECTs by filling traps to enable effective electrochemical doping. To address the fact

that the presence of oxygen simultaneously jeopardizes OECT stability, we develop a two-step strategy in which we first degas the solvent, and then dope the OMIEC in a controlled manner

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ACCESS OPTIONS: * Log in * Learn about institutional subscriptions * Read our FAQs * Contact customer support SIMILAR CONTENT BEING VIEWED BY OTHERS WATER STABLE MOLECULAR N-DOPING PRODUCES

ORGANIC ELECTROCHEMICAL TRANSISTORS WITH HIGH TRANSCONDUCTANCE AND RECORD STABILITY Article Open access 12 June 2020 SUPPRESSING BIAS STRESS DEGRADATION IN HIGH PERFORMANCE SOLUTION

PROCESSED ORGANIC TRANSISTORS OPERATING IN AIR Article Open access 21 April 2021 SWITCHING P-TYPE TO HIGH-PERFORMANCE N-TYPE ORGANIC ELECTROCHEMICAL TRANSISTORS VIA DOPED STATE ENGINEERING

Article Open access 10 October 2022 DATA AVAILABILITY The datasets generated and analysed for this study are available via Figshare at https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.27198807 (ref. 59)

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This work was supported by the National Science Foundation (1849213 to V.N.L., K.T. and A.F.P.; MR-1905734 to K.N.B., M.R.B., J.H.B., C.R. and K.R.G.; DMR-2349830 to V.N.L.,

M.R.B., J.H.B., C.R., K.R.G. and A.F.P). Computing resources on the Lipscomb High Performance Computing Cluster were provided by the University of Kentucky Center for Computational Sciences

and Information Technology Services Research Computing. (M.R.B., J.H.B. and C.R.). This work was also supported by the DOE Office of Science (DE-SC0012704 to L.Q.F.), the Ministry of

Innovation, Science and Technology Israel (M-ERANET PHANTASTIC Call 2021 to O.S. and N.T.), and the Israel Ministry of Science, the Center for Absorption in Science of the Ministry of

Immigrant Absorption, and the Committee for Planning and Budgeting of the Council for Higher Education through the KAMEA Program (O.S.). The authors thank T. J. Balk and A. Stubbers for

their earlier supporting work using small-angle X-ray scattering. AUTHOR INFORMATION AUTHORS AND AFFILIATIONS * Department of Chemical and Materials Engineering, Department of Electrical

Engineering, and Centre for Applied Energy Research, University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY, USA Vianna N. Le & Alexandra F. Paterson * Department of Chemistry, University of Kentucky,

Lexington, KY, USA Kyle N. Baustert & Kenneth R. Graham * Centre for Applied Energy Research, University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY, USA Megan R. Brown, Joel H. Bombile, Karl Thorley 

& Chad Risko * Materials Science and Engineering Division, National Institute of Standards and Technology, Gaithersburg, MD, USA Lucas Q. Flagg * Electrical and Computer Engineering and

the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, USA Christina J. Kousseff & Iain McCulloch * Department of Chemistry, Chemistry Research

Laboratory, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK Christina J. Kousseff & Iain McCulloch * Sara and Moshe Zisapel Nano-Electronic Center, Department of Electrical Engineering, Technion –

Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa, Israel Olga Solomeshch & Nir Tessler Authors * Vianna N. Le View author publications You can also search for this author inPubMed Google Scholar *

Kyle N. Baustert View author publications You can also search for this author inPubMed Google Scholar * Megan R. Brown View author publications You can also search for this author inPubMed 

Google Scholar * Joel H. Bombile View author publications You can also search for this author inPubMed Google Scholar * Lucas Q. Flagg View author publications You can also search for this

author inPubMed Google Scholar * Karl Thorley View author publications You can also search for this author inPubMed Google Scholar * Christina J. Kousseff View author publications You can

also search for this author inPubMed Google Scholar * Olga Solomeshch View author publications You can also search for this author inPubMed Google Scholar * Iain McCulloch View author

publications You can also search for this author inPubMed Google Scholar * Nir Tessler View author publications You can also search for this author inPubMed Google Scholar * Chad Risko View

author publications You can also search for this author inPubMed Google Scholar * Kenneth R. Graham View author publications You can also search for this author inPubMed Google Scholar *

Alexandra F. Paterson View author publications You can also search for this author inPubMed Google Scholar CONTRIBUTIONS V.N.L. fabricated and tested the OECTs, performed the CV and AFM, and

prepared the samples for all other experiments. K.N.B. performed the UPS, EPR and UV-Vis experiments with V.N.L. M.R.B. and J.H.B. performed the DFT calculations. V.N.L., K.N.B., M.R.B. and

J.H.B. analysed and interpreted the data from OECT samples and from CV, UPS, EPR and DFT analyses, with important input from A.F.P., K.R.G. and C.R. L.Q.F. performed and analysed the GIWAXS

experiments. K.T. performed the FTIR analysis and corresponding DFT calculations, and then tested the acene oxygen sensor with V.N.L. C.J.K. synthesized pg3T2, p(g2T2-g4T2), pgBTTT and

p(C6NDI-T). O.S. synthesized the C60F48. N.T. provided the C60F48 dopant. I.M. provided all polymers. A.F.P. and V.N.L. wrote the manuscript, with inputs from all other authors. A.F.P.,

K.R.G. and C.R. supervised the study. A.F.P. conceptualized and directed the study. CORRESPONDING AUTHOR Correspondence to Alexandra F. Paterson. ETHICS DECLARATIONS COMPETING INTERESTS The

authors declare no competing interests. PEER REVIEW PEER REVIEW INFORMATION _Nature Electronics_ thanks Fabio Cicoira, Soniya Yambem and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their

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organic electrochemical transistor stability using solvent degassing and chemical doping. _Nat Electron_ 8, 116–126 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41928-024-01297-8 Download citation *

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