Advanced Functional Materials, Vol.21, No.8, 1476-1488, 2011
Simultaneous Modification of Bottom-Contact Electrode and Dielectric Surfaces for Organic Thin-Film Transistors Through Single-Component Spin-Cast Monolayers
An efficient process is developed by spin-coating a single-component, self-assembled monolayer (SAM) to simultaneously modify the bottom-contact electrode and dielectric surfaces of organic thin-film transistors (OTFTs). This efficient interface modification is achieved using n-alkyl phosphonic acid based SAMs to prime silver bottom-contacts and hafnium oxide (HfO2) dielectrics in low-voltage OTFTs. Surface characterization using near edge X-ray absorption fine structure (NEXAFS) spectroscopy, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), attenuated total reflectance Fourier transform infrared (ATR-FTIR) spectroscopy, atomic force microscopy (AFM), and spectroscopic ellipsometry suggest this process yields structurally well-defined phosphonate SAMs on both metal and oxide surfaces. Rational selection of the alkyl length of the SAM leads to greatly enhanced performance for both n-channel (C-60) and p-channel (pentacene) based OTFTs. Specifically, SAMs of n-octylphosphonic acid (OPA) provide both low-contact resistance at the bottom-contact electrodes and excellent interfacial properties for compact semiconductor grain growth with high carrier mobilities. OTFTs based on OPA modified silver electrode/HfO2 dielectric bottom-contact structures can be operated using < 3V with low contact resistance (down to 700 Ohm-cm), low subthreshold swing (as low as 75 mV dec(-1)), high on/off current ratios of 107, and charge carrier mobilities as high as 4.6 and 0.8 cm(2) V-1 s(-1), for C-60 and pentacene, respectively. These results demonstrate that this is a simple and efficient process for improving the performance of bottom-contact OTFTs.