Charge injection engineering of ambipolar field-effect transistors for high-performance organic complementary circuits

ACS Appl Mater Interfaces. 2011 Aug;3(8):3205-14. doi: 10.1021/am200705j. Epub 2011 Aug 1.

Abstract

Ambipolar π-conjugated polymers may provide inexpensive large-area manufacturing of complementary integrated circuits (CICs) without requiring micro-patterning of the individual p- and n-channel semiconductors. However, current-generation ambipolar semiconductor-based CICs suffer from higher static power consumption, low operation frequencies, and degraded noise margins compared to complementary logics based on unipolar p- and n-channel organic field-effect transistors (OFETs). Here, we demonstrate a simple methodology to control charge injection and transport in ambipolar OFETs via engineering of the electrical contacts. Solution-processed caesium (Cs) salts, as electron-injection and hole-blocking layers at the interface between semiconductors and charge injection electrodes, significantly decrease the gold (Au) work function (∼4.1 eV) compared to that of a pristine Au electrode (∼4.7 eV). By controlling the electrode surface chemistry, excellent p-channel (hole mobility ∼0.1-0.6 cm(2)/(Vs)) and n-channel (electron mobility ∼0.1-0.3 cm(2)/(Vs)) OFET characteristics with the same semiconductor are demonstrated. Most importantly, in these OFETs the counterpart charge carrier currents are highly suppressed for depletion mode operation (I(off) < 70 nA when I(on) > 0.1-0.2 mA). Thus, high-performance, truly complementary inverters (high gain >50 and high noise margin >75% of ideal value) and ring oscillators (oscillation frequency ∼12 kHz) based on a solution-processed ambipolar polymer are demonstrated.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Carbonates / chemistry
  • Cesium / chemistry
  • Electrodes
  • Gold / chemistry
  • Microscopy, Atomic Force
  • Organic Chemicals / chemistry*
  • Polymers / chemistry
  • Transistors, Electronic*

Substances

  • Carbonates
  • Organic Chemicals
  • Polymers
  • Cesium
  • Gold
  • cesium carbonate