Solution-printed organic semiconductor blends exhibiting transport properties on par with single crystals

Muhammad R. Niazi, Ruipeng Li, Er Qiang Li, Ahmad R. Kirmani, Maged Abdelsamie, Qingxiao Wang, Wenyang Pan, Marcia M. Payne, John E. Anthony, Detlef M. Smilgies, Sigurdur T. Thoroddsen, Emmanuel P. Giannelis, Aram Amassian

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

204 Scopus citations

Abstract

Solution-printed organic semiconductors have emerged in recent years as promising contenders for roll-to-roll manufacturing of electronic and optoelectronic circuits. The stringent performance requirements for organic thin-film transistors (OTFTs) in terms of carrier mobility, switching speed, turn-on voltage and uniformity over large areas require performance currently achieved by organic single-crystal devices, but these suffer from scale-up challenges. Here we present a new method based on blade coating of a blend of conjugated small molecules and amorphous insulating polymers to produce OTFTs with consistently excellent performance characteristics (carrier mobility as high as 6.7 cm 2 V -1 s -1, low threshold voltages of<1 V and low subthreshold swings <0.5 V dec -1). Our findings demonstrate that careful control over phase separation and crystallization can yield solution-printed polycrystalline organic semiconductor films with transport properties and other figures of merit on par with their single-crystal counterparts.

Original languageEnglish
Article number8598
JournalNature Communications
Volume6
DOIs
StatePublished - Nov 23 2015

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
We are grateful to Professor Zhenan Bao and Dr Gaurav Giri for the help with setting up the blade-coating instrument and for the helpful discussions. This work was supported by the Office of Competitive Research Funds under the Competitive Research Grant (round 1) and Academic Excellence Alliance (round 3). CHESS was supported by the NSF & NIH/NIGMS via NSF award DMR-1332208. A.A. is grateful to SABIC for the Career Development SABIC Chair.

Publisher Copyright:
© 2015 Macmillan Publishers Limited.

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Chemistry (all)
  • Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology (all)
  • Physics and Astronomy (all)

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