Passivation Layers for Organic Thin-film-transistors

Abstract

Inorganic layers, such as SiOxNy and SiOx deposited using plasma sublimation method, were tested as passivation layer for organic thin-film-transistors (OTFTs). OTFTs with bottom-gate and bottom-contact structure were fabricated using pentacene as organic semiconductor and an organic gate insulator. SiOxNy layer gave little change in characteristics of OTFTs, but SiOx layer degraded the performance of OTFTs severely. Inferior barrier properties related to its lower film density, higher water vapor transmission rate (WVTR) and damage due to process environment of oxygen of SiOx film could explain these results. Polyurea and polyvinyl acetates (PVA) were tested as organic passivation layers also. PVA showed good properties as a buffer layer to reduce the damage come from the vacuum deposition process of upper passivation layers. From these results, a multilayer structure with upper SiOxNy film and lower PVA film is expected to be a superior passivation layer for OTFTs.