33.1: QUE: An e‐Reader Built Using Flexible Display Technology

Modeling of bias-induced changes of organic field-effect transistor characteristics

An active matrix backplane based on solution-processed organic thin-film transistors (OTFTs) has been developed for flexible displays having multiphoton organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs). The OTFT device has a bottom-gate/bottom-contact type structure consisting of a polyethylene naphthalate-based flexible substrate covered with patterned gate electrodes and a gate dielectric of UV-cured cardo-polymer. Teflon AF was used for a hydrophobic bank structure that defines active regions of the OTFTs, and the organic semiconductor was coated by solution shearing. The OTFT backplane fabricated here had $384 \times 128$ pixels at a resolution of 300 dpi; images and video were successfully displayed on the resulting flexible multiphoton-emission OLED display.

Summary form only given. Since it was introduced in 2007 at Illinois, replica molding technique has been applied to fabricate microplasma devices on polymer substrates. Using the replica molding process, lightweight, transparent, and flexible microplasma device was fabricated for various potential applications such as flexible displays, light sources, and medical phototreatment tools. Although several flexible displays using microplasmas or other technologies have been reported, the reliability of device performance in several thin film technologies, requires further improvement because of mechanical fatigue and device contamination due to outgassing or permeation out of the flexible device components. This work describes the fabrication of microplasma devices and arrays by a replica molding process in which the substrate is a flexible and transparent plastic film. In particular, in this research, ultra-thin flexible glass substrates were embedded into the device so as to minimize outgassing of undesirable gas species and reinforce flexible substrates from the fatigue. Several large scale devices and arrays have been demonstrated to date and extended discharge lifetime of the device has been observed. Their electrical performance and optical characteristics as a function of long term operation will be discussed.

Flexible near‐infrared (NIR) light‐sensing detectors are strongly required in the fast‐growing flexible electronics era, because they can serve as a vision system like eyes in various innovative applications including humanoid robots. Recently, keen interest has been paid to organic phototransistors due to their unique signal amplification and active matrix driving features over organic photodiodes. However, conventional NIR‐sensing organic phototransistors suffer from the limited use of organic materials because the channel layers play a dual role in both charge transport and sensing so that organic semiconducting materials with reasonably high charge mobility can be applied only. Here, it is demonstrated that a conjugated polymer, poly[{2,5‐bis‐(2‐ethylhexyl)‐3,6‐bis‐(thien‐2‐yl)‐pyrrolo[3,4‐c]pyrrole‐1,4‐diyl}‐co‐{2,2′‐(2,1,3‐benzothiadiazole)]‐5,5′‐diyl}] (PEHTPPD‐BT), which exhibits no transistor performance as a channel layer, can stably detect a NIR light (up to 1000 nm) as a gate‐sensing layer (GSL) when it is placed between gate‐insulating layers and gate electrodes. The flexible array (10 × 10) detectors with the PEHTPPD‐BT GSLs could effectively sense NIR light without visible light interference by applying visible light cut films.

Organic printed electronics is attracting an ever-growing interest in the last decades because of its impressive breakthroughs concerning the chemical design of π-conjugated materials and their processing. This has an impact on novel applications, such as flexible-large-area displays, low- cost printable circuits, plastic solar cells and lab-on-a-chip devices. The organic field-effect transistor (OFET) relies on a thin film of organic semiconductor that bridges source and drain electrodes. Since its first discovery in the 80s, intensive research activities were deployed in order to control the chemico-physical properties of these electronic devices and consequently their charge. Self-assembled monolayers (SAMs) are a versatile tool for tuning the properties of metallic, semi-conducting, and insulating surfaces. Within this context, OFETs represent reliable instruments for measuring the electrical properties of the SAMs in a Metal/SAM/OS junction. Our experimental approach, named Charge Injection Organic-Gauge (CIOG), uses OTFT in a charge-injection controlled regime. The CIOG sensitivity has been extensively demonstrated on different homologous self-assembling molecules that differ in either chain length or in anchor/terminal group. One of the latest applications of organic electronics is the so-called “bio-electronics” that makes use of electronic devices to encompass interests of the medical science, such as biosensors, biotransducers etc… As a result, thee second part of this thesis deals with the realization of an electronic transducer based on an Organic Field-Effect Transistor operating in aqueous media. Here, the conventional bottom gate/bottom contact configuration is replaced by top gate architecture with the electrolyte that ensures electrical contact between the top gold electrode and the semiconductor layer. This configuration is named Electrolyte-Gated Field-Effect Transistor (EGOFET). The functionalization of the top electrode is the sensing core of the device allowing the detection of dopamine as well as of protein biomarkers with ultra-low sensitivity.

Scanning Probe Microscopy Study of Electronic Properties in Alkyl-substituted Oligothiopene-based Field-Effect Transitors

Direct structuring of C60 thin film transistors by photo-lithography under ambient conditions

Due to their ease of processing, organic semiconductors are promising candidates for applications in high performance flexible displays and fast organic electronic circuitry. Recently, a lot of advances have been made on organic semiconductors exhibiting surprisingly high performance and carrier mobilities exceeding those of amorphous silicon. However, there remain significant concerns about their operational and environmental stability, particularly in the context of applications that require a very high level of threshold voltage stability, such as active-matrix addressing of organic light-emitting diode (OLED) displays. Here, we report a novel technique for dramatically improving the operational stress stability, performance and uniformity of high mobility polymer field-effect transistors by the addition of specific small molecule additives to the polymer semiconductor film. We demonstrate for the first time polymer FETs that exhibit stable threshold voltages with threshold voltage shifts of less than 1V when subjected to a constant current operational stress for 1 day under conditions that are representative for applications in OLED active matrix displays. The approach constitutes in our view a technological breakthrough; it also makes the device characteristics independent of the atmosphere in which it is operated, causes a significant reduction in contact resistance and significantly improves device uniformity. We will discuss in detail the microscopic mechanism by which the molecular additives lead to this significant improvement in device performance and stability.

Organic thin-film transistors (OTFT) are attracting great interest in view of flexible electronics enabling future revolutionizing applications such as flexible displays or wearable electronics. Due to the poor intrinsic charge carrier transport in organic semiconductor thin-films, the main target of development in the last two decades was to find suited semiconductor materials offering a higher charge carrier mobility. However, although record values of clear beyond 10cm²/Vs have been demonstrated, key transistor parameters such as the transconductance or transition frequency have not been improved substantially. In consequence, the performance of today's OTFTs is still too low for many demanding electronic applications. In the last couple of years we have develop various architectures for vertical organic transistor offering superior current driving capabilities compared to state-of-the-art horizontal organic TFTs. Within this 3-dimensional VOFET geometry, the channel length is not defined by the applied patterning technique but rather by the thickness of the organic layers, typically <300nm, separating the vertically stacked source and drain electrodes. This ultra-short channel configuration allows for superior current driving, however, it is usually accompanied by undesired short-channel effects such as loss of saturation and an increased off-current level. In my presentation I introduce the VOFET concept and highlight the development of optimized transistor geometries leading to superior performance with an on/off ratio>10⁷, transition frequency approaching 100MHz and excellent operational stability. In the second part of the contribution I focus on the potential of VOFETs for active matrix OLED (AMOLED) display driving. Comparing typical TFT design guidelines for vertical and horizontal TFTs, it can be deduced that the VOFET design leads to a considerable reduction of area consumption within a pixel which ultimately enables a higher display resolution and a lower power consumption. The concept of vertical transistors is not restricted to organic semiconductors. Hence, I discuss in the third part of my presentation the potential of high mobility metal-oxide semiconductors for vertical thin-film transistors for GHz operation.

A study of mechanical and optical properties of samples of transparent plastic Polyethylene terephthalate glycol (PETG) manufactured by additive technology Fused Filament Fabrication (FFF) was carried out. PETG plastic is used in medicine, particularly in dentistry due to its unique set of properties: strength, elasticity, resistance to aggressive environments, transparency. Preserving the complex of properties of PETG plastic, including transparency, during 3D-printing is an important technical task. In order to solve this task a set of studies of PETG laboratory samples was carried out. The optimum modes of 3D printing were determined to provide PETG samples with increased strength properties, preservation of elastic properties and optical transparency of the material. The increase in the optical transparency of the material is provided by an additional post-treatment of the printed samples surface with a chemical reagent. The influence of technological parameters of the post- treatment mode on the mechanical and optical properties of the printed samples has been investigated. The novelty of the work consists in a comprehensive study of the modes of manufacturing products from PETG by technology FFF with subsequent post-treatment, allowing to preserve the transparency of the polymeric material.

A 3-V, 6-bit DAC is designed using complementary organic thin-film transistors on a glass substrate. The p-channel and n-channel transistors utilize dinaphtho-thieno-thiophene (DNTT) and hexadecafluorocopperphthalocyanine (F 16 CuPc) as the organic semiconductors, respectively. A low-temperature process compatible with flexible plastic substrates is used to fabricate the circuit. The DAC utilizes switched-capacitors to circumvent the large transistor variations, and a C-2C structure to avoid the very large capacitances that would otherwise be required in the thin-film process. With calibration, the DAC achieves DNL and INL of less than +/− 1 LSB at a conversion rate of 100 Hz.

Electret and organic floating-gate memories are next-generation flash storage mediums for printed organic complementary circuits. While each flash memory can be easily fabricated using solution processes on flexible plastic substrates, promising their potential for on-chip memory organization is limited by unreliable bit operation and high write loads. We here report that new architecture could improve the overall performance of organic memory, and especially meet high storage for multi-level operation. Our concept depends on synergistic effect of electrical characterization in combination with a polymer electret (poly(2-vinyl naphthalene) (PVN)) and metal nanoparticles (Copper). It is distinguished from mostly organic nano-floating-gate memories by using the electret dielectric instead of general tunneling dielectric for additional charge storage. The uniform stacking of organic layers including various dielectrics and poly(3-hexylthiophene) (P3HT) as an organic semiconductor, followed by thin-film coating using orthogonal solvents, greatly improve device precision despite easy and fast manufacture. Poly(vinylidene fluoride-trifluoroethylene) [P(VDF-TrFE)] as high-k blocking dielectric also allows reduction of programming voltage. The reported synergistic organic memory devices represent low power consumption, high cycle endurance, high thermal stability and suitable retention time, compared to electret and organic nano-floating-gate memory devices.

Organic semiconductors have great potential for future electronic applications owing to their inherent flexibility, low cost, light weight and ability to easily cover large areas. However, all of these advantageous material properties can only be harnessed if simple, cheap and low-temperature fabrication processes, which exclude the need for vacuum deposition and are compatible with flexible plastic substrates, are employed. There are a few solution-based techniques such as spin-coating and inkjet printing that meet the above criteria. In this paper, we describe a novel all-solution-processed nonvolatile memory device fabricated on a flexible plastic substrate. The source, drain and gate electrodes were printed using an inkjet printer with a conducting organic solution, while the semiconducting layer was spin-coated with an n-type polymer. The charge-trapping layer was composed of spin-coated reduced graphene oxide (rGO), which was prepared in the form of a solution using Hummer’s method. The fabricated device was characterized in order to confirm the memory characteristics. Device parameters such as threshold voltage shift, retention/endurance characteristics, mechanical robustness and reliability upon bending were also analyzed.

Chapter 1 - Flexible Organic Single-Crystal Field-Effect Transistors

Organic semiconductors are poised to transform the world of circuit and display technology. Major electronics firms such as Philips and Pioneer, and smaller companies such as Cambridge Display Technology, Universal Display, and Uniax, are betting that the future holds tremendous opportunity for the low cost and sometimes surprisingly high performance offered by organic electronic and optoelectronic devices. Using organic light-emitting devices (OLEDs), organic full-color displays may eventually replace liquid-crystal displays (LCDs) for use with laptop and even desktop computers. Such displays can be deposited on flexible plastic foils, eliminating the fragile and heavy glass substrates used in LCDs, and can emit bright light without the pronounced directionality inherent in LCD viewing, all with efficiencies higher than can be obtained with incandescent light bulbs.