Materials
One common feature of OFET materials is the inclusion of an aromatic or otherwise conjugated π-electron system, facilitating the delocalization of orbital wavefunctions. Electron withdrawing groups or donating groups can be attached that facilitate hole or electron transport.
OFETs employing many aromatic and conjugated materials as the active semiconducting layer have been reported, including small molecules such as rubrene, tetracene, pentacene, diindenoperylene, perylenediimides, tetracyanoquinodimethane (TCNQ), and polymers such as polythiophenes (especially poly 3-hexylthiophene (P3HT)), polyfluorene, polydiacetylene, poly 2,5-thienylene vinylene, poly p-phenylene vinylene (PPV).
The field is very active, with newly synthesized and tested compounds reported weekly in prominent research journals. Many review articles exist documenting the development of these materials.
Rubrene-based OFETs show the highest carrier mobility 20–40 cm2/(V·s). Another popular OFET material is pentacene, which has been used since 1980s, but resulted in about 10 times lower mobilities than rubrene. The major problem with pentacene, as well as many other organic conductors, is its rapid oxidation in air to form pentacene-quinone. However if the pentacene is preoxidized, and the thus formed pentacene-quinone is used as the gate insulator, then the mobility can approach the rubrene values. This pentacene oxidation technique is akin to the silicon oxidation used in the silicon electronics.
Polycrystalline tetrathiafulvalene and its analogues result in mobilities in the range 0.1–1.4 cm2/(V·s). However, the mobility exceeds 10 cm2/(V·s) in solution-grown or vapor-transport-grown single crystalline hexamethylene-tetrathiafulvalene (HMTTF). The ON/OFF voltage is different for devices grown by those two techniques, presumably due to the higher processing temperatures using in the vapor transport grows.
All the above-mentioned devices are based on p-type conductivity. N-type OFETs are yet poorly developed. They are usually based on perylenediimides or fullerenes or their derivatives, and show electron mobilities below 2 cm2/(V·s).
Read more about this topic: Organic Field-effect Transistor
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