ddOD4T-Based Organic Thin-Film Transistors: A Kelvin Probe Force Microscopy Study of Electronic Properties

N.S. Afsharimania, Y. Geertsb, B. Nystena* UCL - Universit catholique de Louvain, IMCN - Institute of Condensed Matter and Nanosciences (Bio- and Soft Matter), Croix du Sud 1, bte L7.04.01, B-1348 Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium b ULB- Universit Libre de Bruxelles, Chimie des Polymres CP 206/01, Campus de la Plaine, 1050 Bruxelles, Belgique *Bernard.Nysten @uclouvain.be In the last two decades, organic thin-film transistors (OTFTs) have been widely studied because of their attractive aspects such as low cost and low processing temperature as well as printability and flexibility [1]. However, the measured field-effect mobility in OTFTs is relatively low compared to inorganic devices, which limits the number of practical applications [2]. Generally, such low field-effect mobility values in OTFTs result from extrinsic effects such as grain boundaries or imperfect interfaces with metal electrodes. It has been shown that reducing the number of grain boundaries between the source and drain electrodes improves the field effect mobility [3-5]. Furthermore, it has been reported that accumulated carriers induced by the gate voltage are localized within a few monolayers on the gate insulator in the OTFTs [6, 7]. Therefore, it is important to understand the transport mechanisms by studying the structure of organic thin films and local electrical properties within the channel and interfaces with metal electrodes in order to improve the field-effect mobility in the OTFTs. Kelvin probe force microscopy (KPFM) is an ideal tool to simultaneously investigate the local structure and electrical potential distribution of electronic devices for the above mentioned purposes. In this work, we have studied the structure of 3,7-dimethyldienyl octyl-3-dodecylquaterthiophene (ddOD4T) thin film transistors prepared by spin-coating on both treated and untreated substrates. The potential profiles across the channel and at the metal-electrode interfaces have been measured by KPFM. The effect of surface treatment and channel-length on electrical properties of the devices has been studied microscopically. The pinch-off voltage, Vpo, for the device which reached the saturation regime has been also extracted from the surface potential curves.
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Keywords: Organic thin film transistor (OTFT), Oligothiophene, Kelvin probe force microscopy (KPFM)