Balancing the ambipolar conduction for pentacene thin film transistors through bifunctional electrodes

Abstract

We report an effective way to equilibrate hole and electron transport in ambipolar pentacene thin film transistors (TFTs). It was achieved by inserting an ultra thin lithium fluoride (LiF) layer at the electrode/organic interface to form a bifunctional source/drain electrode. It can be observed that the presence of ultrathin LiF layer will facilitate the injection of electrons from source/drain electrodes to organic semiconductor, resulting in a significant enhancement of the n-channel conduction, without sacrificing p-channel conduction for ambipolar pentacene TFTs. These factors make them potential candidates for the organic complementary circuits and inverter circuits of these ambipolar TFTs are also demonstrated.