Electron and ambipolar transport in organic field-effect transistors.

Acenes have long been the subject of intense study because of the unique electronic properties associated with their pi-bond topology. Recent reports of impressive semiconductor properties of larger homologues have reinvigorated research in this field, leading to new methods for their synthesis, functionalization, and purification, as well as for fabricating organic electronic components. Studies performed on high-purity acene single crystals revealed their intrinsic electronic properties and provide useful benchmarks for thin film device research. New approaches to add functionality were developed to improve the processability of these materials in solution. These new functionalization strategies have recently allowed the synthesis of acenes larger than pentacene, which have hitherto been largely unavailable and poorly studied, as well as investigation of their associated structure/property relationships.

The larger acenes: versatile organic semiconductors.

We introduce a method to fabricate high-performance field-effect transistors on the surface of freestanding organic single crystals. The transistors are constructed by laminating a monolithic elastomeric transistor stamp against the surface of a crystal. This method, which eliminates exposure of the fragile organic surface to the hazards of conventional processing, enables fabrication of rubrene transistors with charge carrier mobilities as high as approximately 15 cm2/V.s and subthreshold slopes as low as 2nF.V/decade.cm2. Multiple relamination of the transistor stamp against the same crystal does not affect the transistor characteristics; we exploit this reversibility to reveal anisotropic charge transport at the basal plane of rubrene.

https://science.sciencemag.org/content/sci/303/5664/1644.full.pdf

Elastomeric Transistor Stamps: Reversible Probing of Charge Transport in Organic Crystals

Tetrathiafulvalenes, oligoacenenes, and their buckminsterfullerene derivatives: the brick and mortar of organic electronics.

We have obtained a hole mobility for the organic conductor pentacene of μ=35 cm2/V s at room temperature increasing to μ=58 cm2/V s at 225 K. These high mobilities result from a purification process in which 6,13-pentacenequinone was removed by vacuum sublimation. The number of traps is reduced by two orders of magnitude compared with conventional methods. The temperature dependence of the mobility is consistent with the band model for electronic transport.

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Effect of impurities on the mobility of single crystal pentacene

We report on fabrication and characterization of field effect transistors (FETs) on single-crystal pentacene. These FETs exhibit hole conductivity with room temperature effective mobility up to 0.30 cm2/Vs and on/off ratios up to 5*10^6. A negative gate voltage of -50V significantly decreases the activation energy (Ea) down to 0.143 eV near room temperature. Assuming thermal equilibrium between trapped and free carriers, from Ea = 0.143eV, we find the number of free carriers is only 0.4% of the total number of injected carriers. Along with effective mobility ~ 0.3 cm2/Vs this gives the intrinsic free carrier mobility of ~75 cm2/Vs.

V.Y. Butko

Papers

Limit of Field Effect Mobility on Pentacene Single Crystal