Effect of titanium oxide–polystyrene nanocomposite dielectrics on morphology and thin film transistor performance for organic and polymeric semiconductors

Abstract

Previous studies have shown that organic thin film transistors with pentacene deposited on gate dielectrics composed of a blend of high K titanium oxide–polystyrene core–shell nanocomposite (TiO2–PS) with polystyrene (PS) perform with an order of magnitude increase in saturation mobility for TiO2–PS (K=8) as compared to PS devices (K=2.5). The current study finds that this performance enhancement can be translated to alternative small single crystal organics such as α-sexithiophene (α-6T) (enhancement factor for field effect mobility ranging from 30-100× higher on TiO2–PS/PS blended dielectrics as compared to homogenous PS dielectrics). Interestingly however, in the case of semicrystalline polymers such as (poly-3-hexylthiophene) P3HT, this dramatic enhancement is not observed, possibly due to the difference in processing conditions used to fabricate these devices (film transfer as opposed to thermal evaporation). The morphology for α-sexithiophene (α-6T) grown by thermal evaporation on TiO2–PS/PS blended dielectrics parallels that observed in pentacene devices. Smaller grain size is observed for films grown on dielectrics with higher TiO2–PS content. In the case of poly(3-hexylthiophene) (P3HT) devices, constructed via film transfer, morphological differences exist for the P3HT on different substrates, as discerned by atomic force microscopy studies. However, these devices only exhibit a modest (2×) increase in mobility with increasing TiO2–PS content in the films. After annealing of the transferred P3HT thin film transistor (TFT) devices, no appreciable enhancement in mobility is observed across the different blended dielectrics. Overall the results support the hypothesis that nucleation rate is responsible for changes in film morphology and device performance in thermally evaporated small molecule crystalline organic semiconductor TFTs. The increased nucleation rate produces organic polycrystalline films with small grain size which are better connected and exhibit lower barriers for charge transport and as such higher field effect mobilities are measured in these devices.