Air stable, ambipolar organic transistors and inverters based upon a heterojunction structure of pentacene on N,N′-ditridecylperylene-3,4,9,10-tetracarboxylic di-imide

Abstract

In this paper, we report on the fabrication and electrical characterization of top-contact, ambipolar organic field-effect transistors (OFETs) and inverters based upon a heterostructure of p-type pentacene on n-type N,N′-ditridecylperylene-3,4,9,10-tetracarboxylic di-imide (P13), using the neutral cluster beam deposition (NCBD) method. The device characteristics measured as a function of both P13 and pentacene layer thicknesses revealed that OFETs with thicknesses of P13 (300 Å) and pentacene (200 Å) showed high air-stability and well-balanced ambipolarity with hole and electron mobilities of 0.12 and 0.08 cm2/V s. The complementary inverters, comprising two identical ambipolar OFETs, were found to operate both in the first and third quadrants of the transfer curves and exhibited a high voltage inversion gain of 13, good noise margins, and little hysteresis under ambient conditions. The results presented demonstrate that the NCBD-based ambipolar transistors and inverters qualify them as promising potential candidates for the construction of high-performance, organic thin film-based integrated circuits.