Organic thin film transistors with printed gate electrodes

We have fabricated pentacene thin film transistors on flexible polymeric substrates with gate electrodes prepared using a combination of microcontact printing and selective electroless plating of nickel. These transistors also employ a spin-coated polymer gate dielectric layer patterned by photolithography and dry etching and have a carrier mobility of 0.03 cm/sup 2//V-s, comparable to pentacene transistors with vacuum-deposited gate electrodes. For comparison, we have also fabricated pentacene devices on silicon substrates and obtained carrier mobility as large as 1.3 cm/sup 2//V-s, demonstrating the potential of pentacene thin film transistors for low-cost electronic applications.