All-direct-written high-frequency organic complementary circuits

Andrea Perinot and Mario Caironi
Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia


Abstract

Organic electronics is gaining growing interest thanks to the distinctive features offered by a wide range of different organic materials, among which transparency, flexibility and solution-processability. The possibility of using low-cost, large-area fabrication methods has made this technology a candidate for the integration in applications for the consumer market, such as flexible displays, integrated systems or distributed sensors, and fabrication methods originally developed for the graphic arts world have been shown to be suitable to this purpose. Nonetheless, they generally lack of high-resolution capabilities, thus limiting the possibility of fabricating circuits satisfying the frequency requirements for some of these applications. Here, we report on high-frequency Organic Field-Effect Transistors (OFETs), fully realized through direct-writing methods. These devices are based on a high-resolution fabrication technique which makes use of a femtosecond laser to directly write conductive patterns on a thin layer of silver nanoparticles ink. With this method, we realized features down to a width of 1.8 μm, exhibiting comparable conductivity with respect to features realized with inkjet printing, a lower resolution technique. We used two different organic semiconductors, P(NDI2OD-T2) as an n-type, and diketopyrrolopyrrole-thieno[3,2-b]thiophene (DPPT-TT) as a p-type to fabricate n-type and p-type OFETs featuring channel lengths down to 1 μm and reduced overlap capacitance, exhibiting a transition frequency up to 1 MHz. These high-performance devices were used to fabricate correctly working complementary circuits: inverters and ring-oscillators, validating the approach as a candidate for the fabrication of high-resolution, high-frequency organic circuitry suitable for integration into performance-demanding applications.