Temperature-dependent charge injection and transport in pentacene thin-film transistors

Abstract

The electrical characteristics of p-channel pentacene thin-film transistors (TFTs) were analyzed at different operating temperatures ranging from 253 to 353 K. An improvement in the drain current and field-effect mobility of the pentacene TFTs is observed with increasing temperature. From the Arrhenius plots of field-effect mobility extracted at various temperatures, a lower activation energy of 99.34 meV was obtained when the device is operating in the saturation region. Such observation is ascribed to the thermally activated hole transport through the pentacene grain boundaries. On the other hand, it was found that the Au/pentacene contact significantly affects the TFTs electrical characteristics in the linear region, which resulted in a higher activation energy. The activation energy based on the linear field-effect mobility, which increased from 344.61 to 444.70 meV with decreasing temperature, implies the charge-injection-limited electrical behavior of pentacene TFTs at low temperatures. The thermally induced electrical characteristic variations in pentacene TFTs can thus be studied through the temperature dependence of the charge injection and transport processes.