How small the contacts could be optimal for nanoscale organic transistors?

We report on a study seeking an optimized contact configuration for organic transistors that minimizes contact effects but maintains smallest contact size. We begin with the bulk access resistance in staggered transistors which results from the charge transport through the organic semiconductor film. Bulk access resistance is an intrinsic contributor to the contact resistance which has been little understood due to lack of a reliable study tool. In this work, we utilize the inner transported power inside the semiconductor film as a medium to investigate the contact resistance and the relevant contact effects. We examine the influences of the organic film thickness (t_SC), the channel length (L), the underlying charge transport and various organic semiconductor materials with variable carrier mobility. A roughly optimal contact length (L_C) of L_C0 ≈ 6t_SC is obtained. The results reveal that besides the device architecture the underlying charge transport should be also taken into account in designing organic transistors for practical application.     

meta-Linked spirobifluorene/phosphine oxide hybrids as host materials for deep blue phosphorescent organic light-emitting diodes

This study investigated the use of a novel modification in molecular design to get two new electron-transport host materials, SF3PO and BSF3PO. By linking the phosphine oxide moieties at meta-position of spirobifluorene rings, higher triplet energies could be easily achieved for these two new materials. The steric spirobifluorene structures could guarantee their good thermal stabilities. According to these properties, their applications as host materials for deep blue phosphorescent organic light-emitting diodes (PHOLEDs) were explored. As expected, the deep blue emitting devices with Ir-complex FIr6 as phosphorescent dopants and SF3PO and BSF3PO as hosts had been fabricated and showed high efficiency of 28.5 and 22.0 cd/A, respectively, which were significantly higher than that of the para-linked analogue SPPO1.     

Top-gate organic field-effect transistors fabricated on paper with high operational stability

We report on top-gate organic field-effect transistors (OFETs) fabricated on specialty paper, PowerCoat™ HD 230 from Arjowiggins Creative Papers coated with a buffer layer composed of a polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) and polyvinylpyrrolidine (PVP) blend. OFETs operate at low voltages and display average carrier mobility values of 1.7 ± 1.1 × 10⁻¹ cm²/Vs, average threshold voltage values of −1.4 ± 0.2 V, and average on/off current ratio of 10⁵. OFETs also display excellent operational stability demonstrated by stable 1000 scans of the transfer characteristics and by stable on-currents displaying less than 6% change during a DC bias stress test at V_DS = V_GS = −10 V for 1 h. Furthermore, OFETs on paper display a decrease of only 7% in their on-state current during a bending test. The performance of these OFETs on paper is comparable to that displayed by top-gate OFETs with the same geometry fabricated on glass substrates.     

Regulating crystallization to maintain balanced carrier mobility via ternary strategy in blade-coated flexible organic solar cells

Regulating the crystallization of donor and acceptor to maintain balanced carrier mobility is of great importance to fabricate efficient organic solar cells (OSCs). Herein, the balanced crystallinity between donor and acceptor was finely controlled in blade-coated OSCs. By adding high crystalline FOIC into PBDB-T:ITIC system, a balanced carrier mobility was achieved, resulting in the much improved fill factor. The optimized ternary device exhibits an increased current density, due to the enhanced light-harvesting efficiency with complementary absorption and the morphology change. Morphology characterization demonstrated that the ternary film exhibits a highly balanced crystallinity between the donor and acceptor on account of the formation of acceptor alloy. Moreover, the ternary film not only possesses a small domain size, but also exhibits a high domain purity as compared to both binary films. Encouragingly, a highest power conversion efficiency (PCE) of 10.68% was obtained for the blade-coated ternary OSCs. In addition, the blade-coated flexible large-area (105 mm²) OSC based on PBDB-T:ITIC:FOIC ternary system also exhibits a high PCE of 9.81%, showing great potential in the high-throughput fabrication of OSCs.     

Highly efficient near-infrared thermally activated delayed fluorescence material based on a spirobifluorene decorated donor

The development of red/near-infrared (NIR) thermally activated delayed fluorescence (TADF) emitters are relatively lagging due to the spin statistics and energy gap law. Herein, we designed and synthesized a new NIR TADF emitter, 3-(4-(9,9′-spirobi[fluorene]-3-yl(phenyl)amino)phenyl)acenaphtho[1,2-b]pyrazine-8,9-dicarboni-trile (SDPA-APDC), by incorporating a spiro-type electron-donating moiety N,N-diphenyl-9,9′-spirobi[fluorene]-2-amine (SDPA) to an electron-withdrawing unit acenaphtho[1,2-b]pyrazine-8,9-dicarbonitrile (APDC). The photophysical, electrochemical and thermal properties of SDPA-APDC have been systematically explored. Consequently, the emitter was found high photoluminescence quantum yield (PLQY), narrow bandgap, small singlet-triplet energy gap (ΔE_ST) and excellent thermal stability. Furthermore, SDPA-APDC was developed for electroluminescence devices. The doped devices of SDPA-APDC achieved a red emission peak at 696 nm with a maximum external quantum efficiency (EQE) of 10.75%. And the non-doped device exhibited a NIR emission peak at 782 nm with a maximum EQE of 2.55%     

Fused-ring acceptors based on quinoxaline unit for highly efficient single-junction organic solar cells with low charge recombination

Two non-fullerene small molecule acceptors (TFQ-F and TFQ-Cl) based on quinoxaline unit were designed and synthesized for efficient organic solar cells (OSCs). These two acceptors showed intense absorption up to 900 nm and high thermal stabilities with decomposition temperatures over 360 °C due to their fused-ring skeletons. TFQ-F and TFQ-Cl are the A-D-A′-D-A type acceptors (A/A′ for acceptor unit and D for donor unit). TFQ-F and TFQ-Cl have the same D-A′-D fragment, which was flanked with different ending groups. The effect of different ending groups on their photophysical properties, electrochemical behaviors, micro-structures and charge recombination properties of active layers, and device performance were investigated systematically. PM6 with the complementary absorption to the two acceptors was used as the donor material. The pristine PM6:TFQ-F blend films displayed the optimal morphologies as revealed by AFM and TEM measurement. Organic solar cells based on PM6:TFQ-Cl blend film showed high J_SC of 25.19 mA/cm² and PCE of 13.2%. The Voc, J_SC and PCE for PM6:TFQ-F film based device were 0.857 V, 23.70 mA/cm² and 13.51%, respectively. The dependence of V_OC/J_SC on various light intensities indicated that PM6:TFQ-F/Cl based device had low charge recombination.     

Thermal buffer materials for enhancement of device performance of organic light emitting diodes fabricated by laser imaging process

Laser Induced Thermal Imaging (LITI) is a laser addressed thermal patterning technology with unique advantages such as an excellent uniformity of transfer film thickness, a capability of multilayer stack transfer and a possibility to fabricate high resolution as well as large-area display. Nevertheless, it has been an obstacle to use such a laser imaging process as a commercial technology so far because of serious deterioration of the device performances plausibly due to a re-orientation of the molecular stacking especially in the emitting layer during thermal transfer process. To improve device performances, we devised a new concept to suppress the thermal degradation during such kind of thermal imaging process by using a high molecular weight small molecular species with large steric hindrance as well as high thermostability as a thermal buffer layer to realize highly efficient LITI devices. As a result, we obtained very high relative efficiency (by EQE) up to 91.5% at 1000 cd/m² from the LITI devices when we utilize 10-(naphthalene-2-yl)-3-(phenanthren-9-yl)spiro[benzo[ij]tetraphene-7,9′-fluorene] as a thermal buffer material.     

Enhanced intrinsic stability of the bulk heterojunction active layer blend of polymer solar cells by varying the polymer side chain pattern

Organic photovoltaics (OPVs) have acquired huge attention over the past years as potential renewable energy sources, adding attractive features such as aesthetics, semi-transparency, flexibility, large area printability, improved low-light performance, and cost-effectiveness to the well-known Si-based photovoltaics. Steady improvements in OPV power conversion efficiencies are continuously reported, notably for bulk heterojunction solar cells based on conjugated polymer:fullerene blends. However, apart from efficiency and cost, the stability of organic solar cell devices is of particular concern. Among the different factors contributing to OPV instability, gradual loss of the optimum phase-separated nanomorphology of the photoactive layer blend is a critical parameter. In this paper, we present the results of ‘shelf-life’ accelerated lifetime tests performed for devices containing a range of functionalized poly(3-alkylthiophene) (P3AT) donor polymers upon prolonged thermal stress. By the incorporation of functional moieties on the side chains of P3HT-based copolymers, a remarkable improvement of the intrinsic stability of the active layer blend morphology is accomplished, even for fairly low built-in ratios (5–15%) and without crosslinking to covalently anchor the polymer and/or fullerene molecules. Moreover, these alterations do not influence the initial power conversion efficiencies to a large extent. As such, the presented approach can be regarded as an attractive paradigm for OPV active layer stability.     

Fabrication of organic thin film transistors on Polyethylene Terephthalate (PET) fabric substrates

In this paper organic thin film transistors (OTFTs) are directly fabricated on fabric substrates consisting of Polyethylene Terephthalate (PET) fibers. A key process is coating the polymer layers on the fabric in order to reduce the large surface roughness of the fabric substrate. Two polymers, i.e. polyurethane (PU) and photo-acryl (PA), are used to reduce the large surface roughness and simultaneously improve the process compatibility of the layers with the subsequent OTFTs processes while also retaining the original flexibility of the fabric. The surface roughness of the PU/PA-coated fabric is significantly reduced to 0.3 μm. Furthermore, the original flexibility of the PET fabric remained after coating of the PU/PA polymer layers. The mobility of the OTFTs fabricated on the PU-PA coated fabric substrate is 0.05 ± 0.02 cm²/V s when three PA layers and 90 nm thick pentacene layer were used. The performance does not vary even after 30,000 bending test.     

Very facile fabrication of aligned organic nanowires based high-performance top-gate transistors on flexible,transparent substrate

Aligned single-crystalline organic nanowires (NWs) show promising applications in flexible and stretchable electronics, while the use of pre-existing aligned techniques and well-developed photolithography techniques are impeded by the large incompatibility with organic materials and flexible substrates. In this work, aligned copper phthalocyanine (CuPc) organic NWs were grown on flexible and transparent poly(dimethylsiloxane) (PDMS) substrate via a grating-assisted growth approach. Furthermore, a simple yet efficient etching-assisted transfer printing (ETP) method was used to achieve CuPc NW array-based flexible top-gate organic field-effect transistors (OFETs) with a high mobility up to 2.0 cm² V⁻¹ s⁻¹, a small operating voltage within ±10 V, a high on/off ratio >10⁴, and excellent bend stability with bending radius down to 3 mm. It is expected that the high-performance organic NW array-based top-gate OFETs with exceeding bend stability will have important applications in future flexible electronics.