High operational and environmental stability of high-mobility conjugated polymer field-effect transistors through the use of molecular additives
Type
ArticleAuthors
Nikolka, MarkNasrallah, Iyad
Rose, Bradley Daniel
Ravva, Mahesh Kumar
Broch, Katharina
Sadhanala, Aditya
Harkin, David
Charmet, Jerome
Hurhangee, Michael
Brown, Adam
Illig, Steffen
Too, Patrick
Jongman, Jan
McCulloch, Iain
Bredas, Jean-Luc
Sirringhaus, Henning
KAUST Department
Chemical Science ProgramKAUST Solar Center (KSC)
Laboratory for Computational and Theoretical Chemistry of Advanced Materials
Material Science and Engineering Program
Physical Science and Engineering (PSE) Division
Online Publication Date
2016-12-12Print Publication Date
2017-03Date
2016-12-12Abstract
Due to their low-temperature processing properties and inherent mechanical flexibility, conjugated polymer field-effect transistors (FETs) are promising candidates for enabling flexible electronic circuits and displays. Much progress has been made on materials performance; however, there remain significant concerns about 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 displays. Here, we investigate the physical mechanisms behind operational and environmental degradation of high-mobility, p-type polymer FETs and demonstrate an effective route to improve device stability. We show that water incorporated in nanometre-sized voids within the polymer microstructure is the key factor in charge trapping and device degradation. By inserting molecular additives that displace water from these voids, it is possible to increase the stability as well as uniformity to a high level sufficient for demanding industrial applications.Citation
Nikolka M, Nasrallah I, Rose B, Ravva MK, Broch K, et al. (2016) High operational and environmental stability of high-mobility conjugated polymer field-effect transistors through the use of molecular additives. Nature Materials. Available: http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nmat4785.Acknowledgements
We gratefully acknowledge financial support from Innovate UK (PORSCHED project) and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council though a Programme Grant (EP/M005141/1). I.N. acknowledges studentship support from FlexEnable Ltd. K.B. gratefully acknowledges financial support from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (BR 4869/1-1). A.S. would like to acknowledge support from the India-UK APEX project. B.R., M.K.R. and J.-L.B. acknowledge the financial support from King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), the KAUST Competitive Research Grant program, and the Office of Naval Research Global (Award N62909-15-1-2003); they also acknowledge the IT Research Computing Team and Supercomputing Laboratory at KAUST for providing computational and storage resources.Publisher
Springer Science and Business Media LLCJournal
Nature MaterialsDOI
10.1038/nmat4785Additional Links
http://www.nature.com/nmat/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nmat4785.htmlhttp://spiral.imperial.ac.uk/bitstream/10044/1/44050/2/High operational and environmental stability of high-mobility conjugated polymer field-effect transistors achieved through the use of molecular additives .pdf
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Is Supplemented By:- [Dataset]
Nikolka, M., Nasrallah, I., Rose, B., Ravva, M. K., Broch, K., Harkin, D., Charmet, J., Hurhangee, M., Brown, A., Illig, S., Too, P., Jongman, J., McCulloch, I., Bredas, J.-L., & Sirringhaus, H. (2016). Research data supporting “High operational and environmental stability of high-mobility conjugated polymer field-effect transistors achieved through the use of molecular additives” [Data set]. Apollo - University of Cambridge Repository. https://doi.org/10.17863/CAM.4932. DOI: 10.17863/cam.4932 Handle: 10754/663692