Self-Assembled Molecular Nanowires for High-Performance Organic Transistors

ACS Appl Mater Interfaces. 2017 Jun 21;9(24):20686-20695. doi: 10.1021/acsami.7b01449. Epub 2017 Jun 9.

Abstract

While organic semiconductors provide tantalizing possibilities for low-cost, light-weight, flexible electronic devices, their current use in transistors-the fundamental building block-is rather limited as their speed and reliability are not competitive with those of their inorganic counterparts and are simply too poor for many practical applications. Through self-assembly, highly ordered nanostructures can be prepared that have more competitive transport characteristics; however, no simple, scalable method has been discovered that can produce devices on the basis of such nanostructures. Here, we show how transistors of self-assembled molecular nanowires can be fabricated using a scalable, gradient sublimation technique, which have dramatically improved characteristics compared to those of their thin-film counterparts, both in terms of performance and stability. Nanowire devices based on copper phthalocyanine have been fabricated with threshold voltages as low as -2.1 V, high on/off ratios of 105, small subthreshold swings of 0.9 V/decade, and mobilities of 0.6 cm2/V s, and lower trap energies as deduced from temperature-dependent properties, in line with leading organic semiconductors involving more complex fabrication. High-performance transistors manufactured using our scalable deposition technique, compatible with flexible substrates, could enable integrated all-organic chips implementing conventional as well as neuromorphic computation and combining sensors, logic, data storage, drivers, and displays.

Keywords: image analysis; mobility; nanowire transistor; neuromorphic computing; organic electronics; phthalocyanine; random networks; stability; temperature dependence.