Vacuum production of OTFTs by vapour jet deposition of dinaphtho[2,3-b:2′,3′-f]thieno[3,2-b]thiophene (DNTT) on a lauryl acrylate functionalised dielectric surface

Roll-to-roll (R2R) production of organic transistors and circuits require patterned deposition of organic layers at high deposition rate. Here we demonstrate a vapour-jet process for the rapid deposition of the organic semiconductor dinaphtho[2,3-b:2',3'-f]thieno[3,2-b]thiophene (DNTT). The deposition rate achieved, equivalent to ~200 nm/s onto a stationary substrate, was several orders of magnitude faster than ordinary thermal evaporation. Nevertheless, transistor yield was 100% with an average mobility of 0.4 cm2/Vs in a single pass deposition onto a substrate moving at 0.15 m/min. We also demonstrate a vacuum, high rate R2R-compatible process for surfacefunctionalising a gate dielectric layer with lauryl acrylate which enabled an all-vacuum route to the fabrication of a five-stage ring oscillator

Stable organic static random access memory from a roll-to-roll compatible vacuum evaporation process

An organic Static Random Access Memory (SRAM) based on p-type, six-transistor cells is demonstrated. The bottom-gate top-contact thin film transistors composing the memory were fabricated on flexible polyethylene naphthalate substrates. All metallization layers and the p-type semiconductor dinaphtho[2,3-b:2',3'-f] thieno[3,2-b]thiophene were deposited by thermal evaporation. The gate dielectric was deposited in a vacuum roll-to-roll environment at a web speed of 25 m/min by flash-evaporation and subsequent plasma polymerisation of tripropyleneglycol diacrylate (TPGDA). Buffering the TPGDA with a polystyrene layer yields hysteresis-free transistor characteristics with turn-on voltage close to zero. The static transfer characteristic of diode-connected load inverters were also hysteresis-free with maximum gain >2 and noise margin ∼2.5 V. When incorporated into SRAM cells the time-constant for writing data into individual SRAM cells was less than 0.4 ms. Little change occurred in the magnitude of the stored voltages, when the SRAM was powered continuously from a −40 V rail for over 27 h testifying to the electrical stability of the threshold voltage of the individual transistors. Unencapsulated SRAM cells measured two months after fabrication showed no significant degradation after storage in a clear plastic container in normal laboratory ambient

Organic Digital Logic and Analog Circuits Fabricated in a Roll-to-Roll Compatible Vacuum-Evaporation Process

We report the fabrication of a range of organic circuits produced by a high-yielding, vacuum-based process compatible with roll-to-roll production. The circuits include inverters, NAND and NOR logic gates, a simple memory element (set-reset latch), and a modified Wilson current mirror circuit. The measured circuit responses are presented together with simulated responses based on a previously reported transistor model of organic transistors produced using our fabrication process. Circuit simulations replicated all the key features of the experimentally observed circuit performance. The logic gates were capable of operating at frequencies in excess of 1 kHz while the current mirror circuit produced currents up to 18 μA

A high-yield vacuum-evaporation-based R2R-compatible fabrication route for organic electronic circuits

Advances are described in a vacuum-evaporation-based approach for the roll-to-roll (R2R) production of organic thin film transistors (TFTs) and circuits. Results from 90-transistor arrays formed directly onto a plasma-polymerised diacrylate gate dielectric are compared with those formed on polystyrene-buffered diacrylate. The latter approach resulted in stable, reproducible transistors with yields in excess of 90%. The resulting TFTs had low turn-on voltage, on-off ratios ∼106 and mobility ∼1 cm2/V s in the linear regime, as expected for dinaphtho[2,3-b: 2′,3′-f] thieno[3,2-b]thiophene the air stable small molecule used as the active semiconductor. We show that when device design is constrained by the generally poor registration ability of R2R processes, parasitic source-drain currents can lead to a >50% increase in the mobility extracted from the resulting TFTs, the increases being especially marked in low channel width devices. Batches of 27 saturated-load inverters were fabricated with 100% yield and their behaviour successfully reproduced using TFT parameters extracted with Silvaco's UOTFT Model. 5- and 7-stage ring oscillator (RO) outputs ranged from ∼120 Hz to >2 kHz with rail voltages, VDD, increasing from -15 V to -90 V. From simulations an order of magnitude increase in frequency could be expected by reducing parasitic gate capacitances. During 8 h of continuous operation at VDD = -60 V, the frequency of a 7-stage RO remained almost constant at ∼1.4 kHz albeit that the output signal amplitude decreased from ∼22 V to ∼10 V. Over the next 30 days of intermittent operation further degradation in performance occurred although an unused RO showed no deterioration over the same period. © 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V

Magnetically induced microstructures in liquid crystalline polymers

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