Engineering the Interfacial Materials of Organic Field-Effect Transistors for Efficient Charge Transport

Abstract

ConspectusThe development of organic field-effect transistors (OFETs) has witnessed impressive advances in organic electronics, which has broad application prospects in artificial intelligence, information technology, energy storage, and medical treatments. How to reveal the interface behavior of charge carriers and how to obtain efficient charge transfer of OFETs are very important scientific issues, which are essential for the construction of high-performance OFETs and also for the further understanding of the intrinsic properties of organic semiconductor materials. To this end, the investigation of interfacial materials and related interface engineering is an effective and promising approach, offering potential capabilities of optimizing molecular packing of semiconductors, interface energy alignments, growth morphology, charge injection/output, and contact resistance for efficient charge transport.In this Account, we present our recent progress on engineering the interface materials of OFETs for efficient charge transport. Polymer dielectrics as indispensable components of OFETs have the capability of tuning the charge transport by modulating the interface, such as surface functionalization, chemical structural optimization, and self-assembly of functional groups into nanostructures. It is noted that the chemical-structure engineered polymer dielectrics endowing them with nanostructures on their surfaces represent a promising method for interface engineering. Besides pure polymer dielectrics, surface self-assembled monolayers also well-tune molecular packing of semiconductors for efficient photogenerated carrier transport in optoelectronic devices. In comparison with dielectric modulation, micro-/nanopatterning of source/drain electrodes is a novel and effective approach to optimize device interfaces and improve device performance for efficient charge transfer. Different from the bulk film, the monolayer semiconductor might produce highly efficient charge transport because of its two-dimensional nature with fewer grain boundaries and interface defects. Thanks to the charge density redistribution occurring at semiconductor/dielectric interface, the monolayer semiconductor on a pure polymer dielectric exhibited highly efficient charge transport. Interface engineering has promoted the significant progress of OFETs in the preceding years. We hope the above-mentioned methodologies of engineering the interfacial materials (e.g., the dielectric, semiconductor and electrode) to achieve efficient charge transport of OFETs in this Account will offer a new strategy for designing high-performance optoelectronic devices.

Topics & Concepts