Inkjetted Organic Transistors using a Novel Pentacene Precursor

Pentacene is one of the most promising organic materials for organic transistor fabrication, since it offers higher mobility, better on-off ratio, improved environmental stability, and better reliability than most other organic semiconductors. However, its severe insolubility renders it useless for the solution-based fabrication of electronic devices. Solution-based processing is the key to enabling ultra-low-cost circuit fabrication, since it eliminates the need for lithography, subtractive processing, and vacuum-based film deposition. Using a recently developed soluble pentacene precursor, we demonstrate the first inkjet-printed pentacene transistor fabricated to date. This is achieved using a substrate-gated transistor structure in conjunction with an inkjetprinted pentacene precursor active layer. After deposition, the precursor is converted to pentacene via heating, through the decomposition of the Diels-Alder product. As the anneal temperature increases above 120°C, performance increases dramatically. The process is therefore compatible with numerous low-temperature plastics. As the anneal time is increased to several minutes, performance likewise increases through increased precursor decomposition. However, exposure to excess temperatures or times tends to degrade performance. This is caused by morphological and chemical changes in the pentacene film. Optimization of the anneal process alone has resulted in the demonstration of transistors with an on-off ratio of >10 and field-effect mobility of >0.01cm/V-s, attesting to the great promise of this material.