We report on the detailed electrical investigation of all-inkjet-printed thin-film transistor (TFT) arrays focusing on TFT failures and their origins. The TFT arrays were manufactured on flexible polymer substrates in ambient condition without the need for cleanroom environment or inert atmosphere and at a maximum temperature of 150 °C. Alternative manufacturing processes for electronic devices such as inkjet printing suffer from lower accuracy compared to traditional microelectronic manufacturing methods. Furthermore, usually printing methods do not allow the manufacturing of electronic devices with high yield (high number of functional devices). In general, the manufacturing yield is much lower compared to the established conventional manufacturing methods based on lithography. Thus, the focus of this contribution is set on a comprehensive analysis of defective TFTs printed by inkjet technology. Based on root cause analysis, we present the defects by developing failure categories and discuss the reasons for the defects. This procedure identifies failure origins and allows the optimization of the manufacturing resulting finally to a yield improvement.
In optoelectronics, inkjet printing (IJP) technology is being developed as an alternative to the traditional techniques for organic materials deposition. In this work, we report the fabrication of organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs) on the flexible substrate by studying the effect of a surface chemical treatment on the inkjet printed polymer film morphology. The employed piranha treatment increases the substrate surface energy and improves the wettability, thus inducing a decrease in the IJ printed drop thickness. The IJ printed polymer (poly(9,9-dihexyl-9H-fluorene-2,7-diyl)) is the hole-transporting layer (HTL) of a hybrid structure in which the other layers are deposited by vacuum thermal evaporation. Furthermore, in order to determine the effect of the IJ deposition method on the manufactured OLED performances, we compare them to those of devices fabricated using standard technologies. With this aim, OLEDs with the same structure are fabricated by replacing the IJ printed polymer with a spin-coated film employing the same polymer solution. The electrical and optical properties of the electroluminescent devices are investigated and discussed. Despite the lack of thickness uniformity in IJ printed film, which is an intrinsic, technological limit, OLEDs with IJ printed HTL show electro-optical characteristics that are similar to the ones of OLEDs with spin-coated HTL.
Zinc oxide (ZnO) nanogenerators have attracted increasing interest in the scientific community for use in energy harvesting and mechanical sensing applications. Understanding the interplay between piezoelectricity and semiconductor physics is fundamental to enhancing these devices’ performances, although direct characterization at the nanoscale is challenging. With this work, we present a new strategy to improve piezoresponse force microscopy (PFM) measurements and analysis. This strategy was applied to study the piezoelectric performances of ZnO nanowires grown on seed layers deposited by gravure printing onto flexible substrates. We demonstrate the influence of nanowire diameter and atomic force microscope (AFM) tip position on the piezoresponse amplitude. We also explain our results with simulations showing the importance of considering semiconducting properties in the analysis.
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