Organic field-effect transistors with bending radius down to 1 mm

Abstract

AbstractWe have investigated the allowed bending radius of high-quality pentacene field-effect transistors (OFETs) manufactured on a plastic substrate of a polyethylenenaphthalate (PEN) film with a polyimide gate dielectric layer. It is found that the reduction of mobility due to the application of an expansive stress with a radius of curvature (R) smaller than about 1 mm, was only 20 %. Furthermore, the mobility increase by 7 % to 0.28 cm2/Vs on a compressive stress with R=4.6 mm. We also studied the recovery performance after stressing OFETs. No significant change and residual effect in performance has been found after the removal of the compressive bending the device down to a radius of 4.6 mm (1.4 ± 0.1 % in strain). In the analysis of the mechanical flexibility, we demonstrated that our OFETs electrical properties were fairly stable during the application of an expansive and compressive stress down to several mm in bending radius.