Electronic devices can't work well unless all of the transistors, or switches,
within them allow electrical current to flow easily when they are turned on.
A team of engineers has determined why some transistors made of organic crystals
don't perform well, yielding ideas about how to make them work better.
 | | Engineered organic semiconductor crystals such as these are used to study the effects of current flow in thin film transistors that could be useful in digital displays and flexible electronics. |
Providing insight into a frustrating inconsistency in the performance of electronics
made with organic materials, Stanford researchers have shown that the way boundaries
between individual crystals in a film are aligned can make a 70-fold difference
in how easily current, or electrical charges, can move through transistors.
The research, which could help engineers design better digital displays and
other devices, was published online Nov. 8 in the journal Nature Materials.
Organic semiconductors have a lot to offer in electronics. They are cheap and
flexible, and the production process is much simpler than for traditional silicon
chips. Applications such as computer display screens, digital signs or magazines
made of "electronic paper" have been possibilities for more than a
decade, but their full potential seems always just around the corner. A persistent
problem is that performance from transistor to transistor varies much more than
can be allowed in commercially viable devices.
"You can make a single device that has high 'charge mobility,' but you
really need to make thousands of them," said Alberto Salleo, an assistant
professor of materials science and engineering at Stanford
and a senior co-author of the paper. "Most research groups report a high
variation in that mobility. What we did here is try to understand what causes
the variation."
Systematic study
Salleo's group led a multidisciplinary team of researchers in making a systematic
study of a likely culprit of the inconsistent transistor performance in polycrystalline
devices: the "grain" boundaries between crystals. It turns out that
the differences in boundary alignment can make the path that electric charges
must follow through a transistor look more like a disjointed slog through airport
security than a sprinter's dash.
To examine the role that boundary alignment plays, the paper's lead author,
graduate student Jonathan Rivnay, grew crystals of an organic semiconductor
called PDI8-CN2, synthesized at Northwestern University and Polyera Corp., an
organic electronics company, using a process that ensures consistent alignment
from crystal to crystal in a particular direction.
He then made transistors in which charges could flow through molecules that
were well aligned with each other, and others where the molecules were misaligned
across the grain boundaries. The first kind of transistors performed far better.
He went further to link the properties of these boundaries to the molecular
packing in the crystals.
In addition to the team's direct electrical measurements, the researchers employed
information from extensive theoretical calculations, made by co-author John
E. Northrup at Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, and with X-ray analysis headed
by co-author Michael Toney at the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource.
Could influence future production
Rivnay said the team's work could strongly influence how organic crystal electronics
are made in the future.
"The problem of understanding defects in organic electronic materials
including grain boundaries is very important for any device application,"
Rivnay said. "By better understanding what goes on at these boundaries,
and how detrimental they are, improvements can be made at the chemistry end
as well as at the design and fabrication end of the process. This way devices
can be more reproducible and better performing."
Other authors were Stanford graduate students Leslie Jimison in Materials Science
and Engineering and Rodrigo Noriega in Applied Physics; Northwestern University
chemist Tobin Marks; Polyera Corp. researcher Shaofeng Lu; and Northwestern
faculty member and Polyera Chief Technology Officer Antonio Facchetti. Funding
came from multiple U.S. federal institutions, including the departments of Defense
and Energy and the National Science Foundation, as well as the King Abdullah
University of Science and Technology in Saudi Arabia.
Posted November 10th, 2009
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