Organic Thin Film Transistors Fabricated with Soluble Pentacene Active Channel Layer and NiO x Electrodes

Abstract

We report on the fabrication of soluble pentacene-based thin-film transistors (TFTs) that consist of NiO x , poly-vinyl phenol (PVP), and Ni for the source-drain (S/D) electrodes, gate dielectric, and gate electrode, respectively. The NiO x S/D electrodes of which the work function is well matched to that of soluble pentacene are deposited on a soluble pentacene channel by sputter deposited of NiO target and show a moderately low but still effective transmittance of ∼ 65% in the visible range along with a good sheet resistance of ∼ 40 Ω/□. The maximum saturation current of our soluble pentacene-based TFT is about 15 µA at a gate bias of − 30 V showing a high field effect mobility of 0.03 cm2/Vs in the dark, and the on/off current ratio of our TFT is about 104. It is concluded that jointly adopting NiO x for the S/D electrodes and PVP for gate dielectric realizes a high-quality soluble pentacene-based TFT.