Letter abstract
Nature Materials 4, 601 - 606 (2005)
Published online: 17 July 2005 | doi:10.1038/nmat1426
Subject Categories: Molecular electronics | Semiconductors | Surface and thin films
Organic thin-film electronics from vitreous solution-processed rubrene hypereutectics
Natalie Stingelin-Stutzmann1,2,3, Edsger Smits1,4, Harry Wondergem1, Cristina Tanase4, Paul Blom4, Paul Smith2 & Dago de Leeuw1
Electronic devices based on single crystals of organic semiconductors provide powerful means for studying intrinsic charge-transport phenomena and their fundamental electronic limits1, 2, 3, 4. However, for technological exploitation, it is imperative not to be confined to the tedious growth and cumbersome manipulation of molecular crystals—which generally show notoriously poor mechanical properties—but to be able to process such materials into robust architectures by simple and efficient means. Here, we advance a general route for facile fabrication of thin-film devices from solution. The key beneficial feature of our process—and the principal difference from existing vapour deposition5, 6, 7 and solution-processing schemes7, 8, 9, 10—is the incorporation of a glass-inducing diluent that enables controlled crystallization from an initial vitreous state of the organic semiconductor, formed in a selected area of the phase diagram of the two constituents. We find that the vitrifying diluent does not adversely affect device performance. Indeed, our environmentally stable, discrete rubrene-based transistors rival amorphous silicon devices, reaching saturated mobilities of up to 0.7 cm2 V-1 s-1, ON–OFF ratios of 
106 and subthreshold slopes as steep as 0.5 V per decade. A nearly temperature-independent device mobility, indicative of a high crystalline quality of our solution-processed, rubrene-based films11, corroborates these findings. Inverter and ring-oscillator structures are also demonstrated.
- Philips Research Laboratories, Professor Holstlaan 4, 5656 AA, Eindhoven, The Netherlands
- Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule (ETH) Zürich, Department of Materials, Wolfgang-Pauli-Strasse 10, 8093 Zurich, Switzerland
- Queen Mary, University of London, Department of Materials, Mile End Road, London E1 4NS, UK
- University of Groningen, Nijenborgh 4, 9747 AG Groningen, The Netherlands
Correspondence to: Natalie Stingelin-Stutzmann1,2,3 e-mail: n.stingelin-stutzmann@qmul.ac.uk
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