Inkjet printing of solutions precursors to TIPS-pentacene single crystals onto patterned electrodes

Giulio Pipan1,  Andrea Ciavatti2,  Laura Basiricò2,  Beatrice Fraboni2,  Piero Cosseddu3,  Annalisa Bonfiglio4,  Alessandro Fraleoni-Morgera5
1Dept. of Engineering and Architecture, Univ. of Trieste, Trieste, Italy, 2Dept. of Physics and Astronomy, Univ. of Bologna, Bologna, Italy, 3Dept. of Electrical and Electronic Engineering Univ. of Cagliari, Cagliari, Italy, 4Dept. of Electrical and Electronic Engineering Univ. of Cagliari, Cagliari, Italy; CNR-Nano S3, Modena, Italy, 5Dept. of Engineering and Architecture, Univ. of Trieste, Trieste, Italy; Sincrotrone SCpA, Basovizza (Trieste), Italy; CNR-Nano S3, Modena, Italy


Abstract

In the last years inkjet (IJ) printing has became a very important technology for creating flexible devices for electronics, due to its simplicity, low cost and high throughput. Moreover, it holds a great versatility in terms of type of materials to be deposed, since properly choosing the ink components it is possible to print a huge variety of different materials. One of the currently main prospected applications of IJ printing is the fabrication of organic electronics-based devices [1]. Here we present first results over IJ printed solutions found to be effective precursors to TIPS-Pentacene (TIPS) single crystals, which is a well known high-performing organic semiconductor [2]. In particular, we will show the results of investigations over several different printing parameters, like i) the substrate temperature, ii) the amount of printed solution and the nature of the substrate, iii) the solution formulation. The effects of changing these parameters have been investigated also over substrates including metallic electrodes. We will also show how properly tuning the printing conditions it is possible to obtain multiple single crystals even on interdigitated electrodes realized onto flexible substrates. The so-obtained crystals have been investigated in actual devices, as X-rays direct detectors [3].

References [1] A. Teichler et al., J. Mater. Chem. C, 2013,1, 1910 [2] S. K. Park et al., Appl. Phys. Lett., 2007, 91, 063514 [3] B. Fraboni et al., Adv. Mater., 2012, 24, 2289