Polymer Inverter Fabricated by Inkjet Printing and Realized by Transistors Arrays on Flexible Substrates

Abstract

We have fabricated organic thin-film transistors (OTFTs) and implemented inverters on flexible substrates using polythiophene (PHT) as the semiconductor and polyvinylphenol (PVP) as the gate dielectric. The semiconductor was defined by inkjet printing. The poor consistency of the printing process has affected the uniformity of inkjet-printed OTFTs enormously. We also proposed a method to increase the yield by incorporating a pre-testing step during circuit fabrication. We designed and fabricated a basic unit of circuits called a thin-film transistor (TFT) array. These devices were then connected to each other to form a gate via printed nano-silver. To verify the implementation flow, we designed and measured bootstrap inverters and ring oscillator composed of them. The five-stage ring oscillator has been fabricated and oscillated at the frequency, 60 Hz, when the supply voltage is 40 V.