Issue 24, 2014

Flexible logic circuits based on top-gate thin film transistors with printed semiconductor carbon nanotubes and top electrodes

Abstract

In this report printed thin film transistors and logic circuits on flexible substrates are reported. The top-gate thin film transistors were made of the sorted semiconducting single-walled carbon nanotubes (sc-SWCNTs) ink as channel material and printed silver lines as top electrodes and interconnect. 5 nm HfOx thin films pre-deposited on PET substrates by atomic layer deposition (ALD) act as the adhesion layers to significantly improve the immobilization efficiency of sc-SWCNTs and environmental stability. The immobilization mechanism was investigated in detail. The flexible partially-printed top-gate SWCNT TFTs display ambipolar characteristics with slightly strong p-type when using 50 nm HfOx thin films as dielectric layer, as well as the encapsulation layer by atomic layer deposition (ALD) at 120 °C. The hole mobility, on/off ratio and subthreshold swing (SS) are ∼46.2 cm2 V−1 s−1, 105 and 109 mV per decade, respectively. Furthermore, partially-printed TFTs show small hysteresis, low operating voltage (2 V) and high stability in air. Flexible partially-printed inverters show good performance with voltage gain up to 33 with 1.25 V supply voltage, and can work at 10 kHz. The frequency of flexible partially-printed five-stage ring oscillators can reach 1.7 kHz at supply voltages of 2 V with per stage delay times of 58.8 μs. This work paves a way to achieve printed SWCNT advanced logic circuits and systems on flexible substrates.

Graphical abstract: Flexible logic circuits based on top-gate thin film transistors with printed semiconductor carbon nanotubes and top electrodes

Supplementary files

Article information

Article type
Paper
Submitted
19 Sep 2014
Accepted
12 Oct 2014
First published
13 Oct 2014

Nanoscale, 2014,6, 14891-14897

Flexible logic circuits based on top-gate thin film transistors with printed semiconductor carbon nanotubes and top electrodes

W. Xu, Z. Liu, J. Zhao, W. Xu, W. Gu, X. Zhang, L. Qian and Z. Cui, Nanoscale, 2014, 6, 14891 DOI: 10.1039/C4NR05471G

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