Keywords

Organic field effect transistors, carbon nanotube electrode, pentacene, aligned array, solution processed, dielectrophoresis, interfacial area, interfacial barrier

Abstract

Organic field-effect transistors (OFETs) have attracted tremendous attention due to their flexibility, transparency, easy processiblity and low cost of fabrication. High-performance OFETs are required for their potential applications in the organic electronic devices such as flexible display, integrated circuit, and radiofrequency identification tags. One of the major limiting factors in fabricating high-performance OFET is the large interfacial barrier between metal electrodes and OSC which results in low charge injection from the metal electrodes to OSC. In order to overcome the challenge of low charge injection, carbon nanotubes (CNTs) have been suggested as a promising electrode material for organic electronic devices. In this dissertation, we study the effect of carbon nanotube (CNT) density in CNT electrodes on the performance of organic field effect transistor (OFETs). The devices were fabricated by thermal evaporation of pentacene on the Pd/single walled CNT (SWCNT) electrodes where SWCNTs of different density (0-30/um) were aligned on Pd using dielectrophoresis (DEP) and cut via oxygen plasma etching to keep the length of nanotube short compared to the channel length. From the electronic transport measurements of 40 devices, we show that the average saturation mobility of the devices increased from 0.02 for zero SWCNT to 0.06, 0.13 and 0.19 cm2/Vs for low (1-5 /µm), medium (10-15 /µm) and high (25-30 /µm) SWCNT density in the electrodes, respectively. The increase is three, six and nine times for low, medium and high density SWCNTs in the electrode compared to the devices that did not contain any SWCNT. In addition, the current on-off ratio and on-current of the devices are increased up v to 40 times and 20 times with increasing SWCNT density in the electrodes. Our study shows that although a few nanotubes in the electrode can improve the OFET device performance, significant improvement can be achieved by maximizing SWCNT/OSC interfacial area. The improved OFET performance can be explained due to a reduced barrier height of SWCNT/pentacene interface compared to metal/pentacene interface which provides more efficient charge injection pathways with increased SWCNT/pentacene interfacial area.

Notes

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Graduation Date

2012

Semester

Fall

Advisor

Khondaker, Saiful

Degree

Master of Science (M.S.)

College

College of Sciences

Department

Physics

Degree Program

Physics

Format

application/pdf

Identifier

CFE0004558

URL

http://purl.fcla.edu/fcla/etd/CFE0004558

Language

English

Release Date

December 2013

Length of Campus-only Access

1 year

Access Status

Masters Thesis (Open Access)

Subjects

Dissertations, Academic -- Sciences, Sciences -- Dissertations, Academic

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