Ultralow-power organic complementary circuits

TLDR: This work demonstrates an organic circuit with very low power consumption that uses a self-assembled monolayer gate dielectric and two different air-stable molecular semiconductors (pentacene and hexadecafluorocopperphthalocyanine, F16CuPc) to implement transistors, circuits, displays and sensors on arbitrary substrates.

Abstract: Organic transistors and circuits show great promise for the realization of futuristic roll-up displays, adaptive sensors for humanoid robots and ubiquitous radio-frequency identification tags. But today's organic circuits require operating voltages of 15 to 30 volts (10 to 20 batteries' worth), and they draw enough power to drain those batteries in a day. To overcome this major hurdle, Hagen Klauk et al. have developed a method of fabricating organic circuits that run on a single 1.5-volt battery for several years. The key to the method is the use of a layer of an insulating organic material just one molecule thick; although the layer is very thin, it leaks only a small amount of current, while it provides for a large capacitance. Two different types of organic semiconductors are used to fabricate transistors, logic gates and ring oscillators. A report of the development of organic electronic circuits, which require only a single 1.5V battery and last for several years. The main ingredient is the use of a single layer of an insulating organic material. Although the layer is very thin, it leaks only small amount of current, while providing for a large capacitance. The prospect of using low-temperature processable organic semiconductors to implement transistors, circuits, displays and sensors on arbitrary substrates, such as glass or plastics, offers enormous potential for a wide range of electronic products1. Of particular interest are portable devices that can be powered by small batteries or by near-field radio-frequency coupling. The main problem with existing approaches is the large power consumption of conventional organic circuits, which makes battery-powered applications problematic, if not impossible. Here we demonstrate an organic circuit with very low power consumption that uses a self-assembled monolayer gate dielectric and two different air-stable molecular semiconductors (pentacene and hexadecafluorocopperphthalocyanine, F16CuPc). The monolayer dielectric is grown on patterned metal gates at room temperature and is optimized to provide a large gate capacitance and low gate leakage currents. By combining low-voltage p-channel and n-channel organic thin-film transistors in a complementary circuit design, the static currents are reduced to below 100 pA per logic gate. We have fabricated complementary inverters, NAND gates, and ring oscillators that operate with supply voltages between 1.5 and 3 V and have a static power consumption of less than 1 nW per logic gate. These organic circuits are thus well suited for battery-powered systems such as portable display devices2 and large-surface sensor networks3 as well as for radio-frequency identification tags with extended operating range4.