Direct printing of organic transistors with 2μm channel resolution

Abstract

Organic materials offer the possibility of printing flexible electronic devices with large area coverage in a printing press. Usually this vision conflicts with the requirement of high-resolution feature formation. The authors demonstrate here that thin film transistors with 2μm channel length can be printed using a reel-to-reel compatible process. The development of a dry printing method used in combination with a high-resolution, solvent resistant plates, and sintered metallic nanoinks enables high-resolution printing of functional liquid inks. In addition, dry printing allows for the sequential printing of solid films overcoming the severe solvent incompatibility issues faced by standard printing techniques.

Thin-Film Organic Electronic Devices

“…The most prominent role for insulating polymers in organic devices involves the gate dielectric for organic field-effect transistors (OFETs). Many common polymers can serve this function, including poly(methyl methacrylate), poly(vinyl phenol) and other polystyrenes, polyvinyl alcohol, polyimides, silicone network polymers, and parylene ( Figure 2) (33,34). Solution-based patterning of overlaying layers, including semiconductors and contacts, is eased by use of cross-linkable polymer dielectrics (35).…”

Organic Thin-Film Transistors Fabricated by Microcontact Printing

“…However, the printing area of additive mCP realized by past investigations did not exceed 50 mm square area. [9][10][11] Furthermore, the alignment accuracy of the printed circuit was 50 -100 mm, 12) because of technical problems such as printer precision, substrate distortion, and stamp distortion. 13) Owing to such technical problems, the application of mCP to the direct pattern transfer of functional materials of OTFT components has been limited to only a single layer (usually the source/drain electrode layer) of patterning processes of whole device fabrication.…”

“…13) Owing to such technical problems, the application of mCP to the direct pattern transfer of functional materials of OTFT components has been limited to only a single layer (usually the source/drain electrode layer) of patterning processes of whole device fabrication. 10,[13][14][15][16][17] We have developed a printing method based on mCP and have already reported the fabrication of fine-patterned OTFTs with large areas. 18) In this method, both precise alignment of overlaid layers and high-resolution printing on a large area are enabled by combining two-dimensional press and one-dimensional press (Fig.…”

Laser-printed interdigitated Ag electrodes for organic thin film transistors

“…OTFTs have considerable potential for applications such as radio frequency identification (RFID) tags, smart cards, displays and flexible microelectronics. For manufacturing organic TFTs, printing processes, such as inkjet printing, screen printing, microcontact printing, laser printing and a combination of laser processing with inkjet printing, are very attractive as alternatives to conventional photolithography processes because they can reduce manufacturing costs and can generate patterns of functional materials (gate, source/drain electrodes, active semiconductors) non-lithographically [1][2][3][4][5][6]. Established approaches to the fabrication of the source/drain electrodes for OTFTs have relied on conducting polymer materials, such as poly (3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene) : poly(4styrenesulfonate) (PEDOT : PSS) and polyaniline, due to their compatibility with organic semiconductors [7].…”