Effective Jet Printing of Organic Semiconducting Polymers

Abstract

AbstractOrganic semiconducting polymers are an attractive alternative to conventional inorganic materials because of the ability to process the polymers from solution and apply them to flexible substrates using lower temperatures and at a lower cost. Direct writing of these materials has the potential to reduce processing steps and material waste. While printing of semiconductors for organic light emitting diodes (OLEDs) is well known, little has been reported on printing semiconductors for organic thin-film transistors (OTFTs). We have developed a process to fabricate TFTs and arrays using jet printing to eliminate all photolithographic patterning. Active layers of the polymeric semiconductor are jet-printed for the active layer. Many factors are found to affect the characteristics of devices having a jet-printed semiconductor layer, including the substrate temperature, surface energy, device geometry, and drop size and overlap. We will discuss the printing conditions that lead to performance similar to that of devices fabricated by spin coating.