Tuning Interfacial Properties by Spontaneously Generated Organic Interlayers in Top‐Contact‐Structured Organic Transistors

Abstract

Abstract Controlling the interfacial properties between the electrode and active layer in organic field‐effect transistors (OFETs) can significantly affect their contact properties, resulting in improvements in device performance. However, it is difficult to apply to top‐contact‐structured OFETs (one of the most useful device structures) because of serious damage to the organic active layer by exposing solvent. Here, a spontaneously controlled approach is explored for optimizing the interface between the top‐contacted source/drain electrode and the polymer active layer to improve the contact resistance ( R C ). To achieve this goal, a small amount of interface‐functionalizing species is blended with the p‐type polymer semiconductor and functionalized at the interface region at once through a thermal process. The R C values dramatically decrease after introduction of the interfacial functionalization to 15.9 kΩ cm, compared to the 113.4 kΩ cm for the pristine case. In addition, the average field‐effect mobilities of the OFET devices increase more than three times, to a maximum value of 0.25 cm 2 V −1 s −1 compared to the pristine case (0.041 cm 2 V −1 s −1 ), and the threshold voltages also converge to zero. This study overcomes all the shortcomings observed in the existing results related to controlling the interface of top‐contact OFETs by solving the discomfort of the interface optimization process.