and have led to several commercial products such as inks, sensors, and displays.Conductive polymers can be synthesized by several methods, each with their own set of advantages and disadvantages. Chemical polymerization is the simplest method, requiring only the reagents necessary for the polymerization and a container, but generally results in poor properties. Electrochemical polymerization is a more controlled polymerization method (via the voltage and current), but requires a problematic three-electrode set up when considering large areas and upscaling. One polymerization technique that has shown promise, both for resulting in good conductive polymer properties and the potential for large area manufacturing, is vapor phase polymerization (VPP). [3,4] VPP uses a liquid oxidant that polymerizes a vapor monomer. The oxidant can be deposited using many different techniques, the most common method is spin coating, which results in very smooth and homogenous layers. [5][6][7][8] Performing VPP on spin-coated oxidant films has been shown to provide conductive polymers of impressive electronic properties and relatively large scale (10 cm 2 ). [9,10] However, its ability to coat one substrate at a time and the material waste makes spin coating unsuitable for hundreds of devices or truly large scale (≈dm 2 − m 2 ).Various deposition methods of the oxidant followed by VPP have been published to push the resolution of patterns possible via dip pen lithography [11] or for increasing the possibility for largescale manufacturing via inkjet printing. [12] However, truly scalable conductive polymer films fabricated by VPP have yet to be shown.Screen printing is one industrial standard deposition technique that can be truly scalable in either a sheet-by-sheet or roll-to-roll process. This technique allows pattern resolutions of at least 100 µm (with 100 µm spacing) and the ink deposition is performed within seconds. Screen printing has been used extensively for display, [13] sensor, [14] energy storage, [15] and transistor [16] applications due to the ability of over-printability, alignment at high accuracy, and registration marks allowing layer-by-layer deposition of functional inks.The combination of screen printing and the VPP process will permit all-printed devices to be fabricated at high resolution, which opens the possibilities of commercialization due to the cost-effective deposition technique. Previous reports combining Large area manufacturing of printed electronic components on ~A4-sized substrates is demonstrated by the combination of screen printing and vapor phase polymerization (VPP) into poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene) (PEDOT).The oxidant layer required for the polymerization process is screen printed, and the resulting conductive polymer patterns are manufactured at high resolution (100 µm). Successful processing of several common oxidant species is demonstrated, and the thickness can be adjusted by altering the polymerization time. By comparing the polymer films of this work to a commercial PEDOT:PSS (PEDOT d...
Nowadays, most electronic gadgets comprise integrated circuits containing transistors, the key active components of modern electronics. Synthesis of novel organic materials has fostered the development of organic transistors controlled via electrolytic interfaces: (i) organic electrochemical transistors (OECT) and (ii) electrolyte-gated field-effect transistors (EGOFET); two devices that are governed by different operation mechanisms, partly originating from the features of the organic semiconductors used as channel materials. [7] In the OECT, charges are contained in the entire bulk of the organic semiconductor, giving rise to the high volumetric capacitance, resulting in high on-currents, high transconductance, high ON/OFF ratio, simplified device architectures, and low operation voltages of approximately 1 V. However, the enormous device capacitance also results in slow transistor response; this can be explained by the fact that the OECT relies on the movement of ions from the electrolyte into the bulk of the channel, and vice versa. Conversely, in EGOFETs, charges accumulate at the interface between the semiconductor and the electrolyte due to the electric double layers, resulting in shorter switching time, equally low switching voltages, similar ON/OFF ratio, but clearly lower current throughput. [8,9] Emerging application areas for organic transistors, especially OECTs, are biosensing, [10,11] electrophysiological recording, [12] neuromorphic devices, [13] and printed circuits. [3] The thickness of the electrolyte layer is noncritical from a device functionality point of view. In screen printed devices, the electrolyte thickness typically exceeds 10 µm, thereby paving the way for robust device architectures empowering large-scale manufacturing via reliable printing techniques. [14] An OECT is a three terminal device in which the source and drain electrodes are electronically connected via an organic semiconducting channel material, and a gate electrode is ionically linked to the channel by the electrolyte. Poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene) doped with poly(styrene sulfonate) (PEDOT:PSS) is commonly used as the organic conjugated polymer in printed OECT channels. [15] Various OECT device architectures and materials have been explored in the last decade to improve the OECT switching response. As a result, by replacing PEDOT:PSS with carbon as the source and drain electrodes, short switching times and symmetric switching behavior have been reported in printed OECTs relying on PEDOT:PSS-based channels. [16] In 2017, This work demonstrates a novel fabrication approach based on the combination of screen and aerosol jet printing to manufacture fully printed organic electrochemical transistors (OECTs) and OECT-based logic circuits on PET substrates with superior performances. The use of aerosol jet printing allows for a reduction of the channel width to ≈15 µm and the estimated volume by a factor of ≈40, compared to the fully screen printed OECTs. Hence, the OECT devices and OECT-based logic circuits fabricated with ...
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