Air-stability and bending properties of flexible organic field-effect transistors based on poly[N-9′-heptadecanyl-2,7-carbazole-alt-5,5-(4′,7′-di-2-thienyl-2′,1′,3′-benzothiadiazole)]

We have fabricated flexible field-effect transistors (FETs) using poly[N-9′-heptadecanyl-2,7-carbazole-alt-5,5-(4′,7′-di-2-thienyl-2′,1′,3′-benzothiadiazole)], PCDTBT, as an active channel, poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) as gate dielectric and biaxially oriented polyethyleneterephthalate (BOPET) as supporting substrate. The output and transfer characteristics of the devices were measured as a function of channel length. It has been observed that various OFET parameters viz. on–off ratio (∼10⁵), mobility (μ ∼ 10⁻⁴ cm² V⁻¹ s⁻¹), threshold voltage (V_th ∼ −14 V), switch-on voltage (V_so ∼ −6 V), subthreshold slope (S ∼ 7 V/decade) and trap density (N_it ∼ 10¹⁴ cm⁻² V⁻¹) are almost independent of the channel length, which suggested a very high uniformity of the PCDTBT active layer. These devices were highly stable under atmospheric conditions (temperature: 20–35 °C and relative humidity: 70–85%), as no change in mobility was observed on a continuous exposure for 70 days. The studies on the effect of strain on mobility revealed that devices are stable up to a compressive or tensile strain of 1.2%. These results indicate that PCDTBT is a very promising active layer for the air stable and flexible FETs.