Organic permeable-base transistors - superb power efficiency at highest frequencies (Conference Presentation)

Abstract

Organic field-effect transistors (OFET) are important elements in thin-film electronics, being considered for flat-panel or flexible displays, radio frequency identification systems, and sensor arrays. To optimize the devices for high-frequency operation, the channel length, defined as the horizontal distance between the source and the drain contact, can be scaled down. Here, an architecture with a vertical current flow, in particular the Organic Permeable-Base Transistors (OPBT), opens up new opportunities, because the effective transit length in vertical direction is precisely tunable in the nanometer range by the thickness of the semiconductor layer. We present an advanced OPBT, competing with best OFETs while a low-cost, OLED-like fabrication with low-resolution shadow masks is used (Klinger et al., Adv. Mater. 27, 2015). Its design consists of a stack of three parallel electrodes separated by two semiconductor layers of C60 . The vertical current flow is controlled by the middle base electrode with nano-sized openings passivated by an native oxide. Using insulated layers to structure the active area, devices show an on/off ratio of 10⁶ , drive 11 A/cm² at an operation voltage of 1 V, and have a low subthreshold slope of 102 mV/decade. These OPBTs show a unity current-gain transit frequency of 2.2 MHz and off-state break-down fields above 1 MV/cm. Thus, our optimized setup does not only set a benchmark for vertical organic transistors, but also outperforms best lateral OFETs using similar low-cost structuring techniques in terms of power efficiency at high frequencies.