A Large-Area Gravure Printed Process for P-type Organic Thin-Film Transistors on Plastic Substrates

This paper presents a p-type Organic Thin-film Transistor (OTFT) technology based on gravure printing, specifically developed for scale-up and transfer to a Pilot Line (GEN1 320 × 380 mm
²
), In order to enable large-area and high-throughput processing for cost-effective electronic circuitry and sensors backplane production, this technology exploits an organic polymer semiconductor with high mobility engineered to be processed by gravure printing. A statistical analysis of the printed patterns and of the OTFT electrical performance are presented. Modelling of the technology for a Design Tool Kit is presented and preliminary results on circuit measurement are described, achieving state of the art performance for gravure-printed circuits. A propagation delay of 8.7 μs has been estimated for a single inverter, based on measurements of a 7-stage ring oscillator. A single-ended inverter-based amplifier shows a gain of 23.7 dB, a cut-off frequency of 24.5 Hz and an integrated input-referred noise of 576.8 μVrms for a current consumption of 3.5 μA.