Soluble Fullerene-Based n-Channel Organic Thin-Film Transistors Printed by Using a Polydimethylsiloxane Stamp

A polydimethylsiloxane stamp was applied for the first time to the fabrication of n-channel thin-film transistors based on soluble small molecule organic semiconducting materials. The stamping method was found to facilitate film transfer onto a gate insulator surface irrespective of its surface free energy. We used [6,6]-phenyl-C61-butyric acid methyl ester (PCBM) and C60-fused N-methylpyrrolidine-meta-dodecyl phenyl (C60MC12) as n-channel materials. The stamped thin-film transistors of C60MC12 achieved a high electron mobility of 0.39 cm2/(V s) and a current on−off ratio of 1 × 107. The mobility of the stamped C60MC12 thin-film transistors did not depend much on the surface free energy of the SiO2 gate insulator with and without surface treatment using a silane-coupling reagent. In particular, the stamped C60MC12 thin-film transistor exhibited a relatively high mobility of 0.1 cm2/(V s) on a high energy surface of untreated SiO2. In addition, a complementary inverter composed of an n-channel and a p-channel stamped thin-film transistor was demonstrated for the first time, which exhibits a maximum gain of 63 at a supply voltage of 50 V.