Electronic properties of organic thin film transistors with nanoscale tapered electrodes

Organic thin-film transistors (OTFTs) have received increasing attention because of their potential applications in displays, optoelectronics, logic circuits, and sensors. Ultrathin OTFTs are of technical interest as a possible route toward reduced bias stress in standard OTFTs and enhanced sensitivity in chemical field-effect transistors (ChemFETs). ChemFETs are OTFTs whose output characteristics are sensitive to the presence of analytes via changes in the channel mobility and/or threshold voltage induced by analyte chemisorption onto the channel materials. The fundamental understanding of charge transport properties of organic thin-films is critical for the applications. OTFT has been demonstrated by many groups; however, there has been much less progress towards more reliable contact structure between organic materials and electrodes. This thesis investigates the electrical properties of metal phthalocyanine thin-film devices. In chapter 1, the basic electrical properties in OTFTs are reviewed. In chapter 2, we have investigated the microfabrication process of OTFTs to control the contact morphology and the charge transport properties of phthalocyanine thin-film devices. In chapter 3, the channel thickness dependence of the mobility was investigated in bottom-contact copper phthalocyanine (CuPc) OTFTs. The current-voltage characteristics of bottom contact CuPc OTFTs with low contact resistance fabricated by the bilayer photoresist lift-off process were analyzed to determine the mobility, threshold voltage and contact resistance. The independence of measured electronic properties from channel thickness is due to the contact resistance being negligible for all channel thicknesses. For practical applications, the aging and recovery process in CuPc OTFTs were investigated in chapter 4. An origin of the aging process on CuPc OTFTs has been investigated based on the responses of thick 1000ML CuPc OTFTs under a controlled atmosphere. The recovery process under 30 % relative humidity with pure dry air for 48 hours and pure dry air for 24 hours can improve the OTFTs performance with a good current saturation behavior, a high mobility, a low threshold voltage and a high current on/off ratio due to controlling dopants. The bottom contact OTFTs with low contact resistance created in this work could serve useful in a variety of applications and initial results are presented for their use as displays, optoelectronics, logic circuits, and sensor