Electrically engineered polymer-carbon hybrid heterojunction for high-performance printed transistors

Abstract

Molecularly hybridized materials composed of polymer semiconductors (PSCs) and single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWNTs) may provide a new platform to exploit an advantageous combination of semiconductors, which yields electrical properties that are not available in a single component system. Here, we demonstrate high-performance ink-jet printed hybrid transistors with an electrically engineered heterostructure by using specially designed PSCs and semiconducting SWNTs (sc-SWNTs) whose system achieved a high mobility of 0.23 cm2V-1s-1, no Von shift, a low offcurrent, and good bias-stability. We also revealed that binding energy between PSCs and sc-SWNT was strongly affected by side-chain length of PSCs, leading to the formation of homogeneous nanohybrid film. Eventually, understanding of electrostatic interactions in the heterostructure and experimental results suggest criteria for the design of nanohybrid heterostructures. © 2014 SPIE.