Low-voltage organic field-effect transistors for flexible electronics

A process for the fabrication of bottom-gate, top-contact (inverted staggered) organic thin-film transistors (TFTs) with channel lengths as short as 1 μm on flexible plastic substrates has been developed. The TFTs employ vacuum-deposited small-molecule semiconductors and a low-temperature-processed gate dielectric that is sufficiently thin to allow the TFTs to operate with voltages of about 3 V. The p-channel TFTs have an effective field-effect mobility of about 1 cm
²
/Vs, an on/off ratio of 10
⁷
, and a signal propagation delay (measured in 11-stage ring oscillators) of 300 ns per stage. For the n-channel TFTs, an effective field-effect mobility of about 0.06 cm
²
/Vs, an on/off ratio of 10
⁶
, and a signal propagation delay of 17 μs per stage have been obtained.