From conductor to semiconductor: Diameter tuning of electrospun ITO nanowire for low-cost electronics

Constructing a semiconducting channel and electrodes using an identical material is a reliable method to fabricate low-cost, high-performance transistors. Wide-bandgap metal oxide semiconductors (MOSs) have been widely applied in various circuits. However, it is still a challenge to make low-cost transistors with a channel and electrodes based on identical MOSs. Here, we applied an electrospinning technique coupled with a nanowire transfer technique to fabricate high-performance, electrical-biased transistors with a one-dimensional indium tin oxide (ITO) nanowire, used as the semiconducting channel and the conducting source/drain (S/D) electrodes. The transition from a regular-conducting ITO to the newly-designed semiconducting ITO was achieved by tuning the needle diameter of the electrospinning nozzle. This method can be extended to the construction of future flexible and transparent transistors with both a channel and S/D electrodes.