Metal oxide thin-film transistors are fast becoming a ubiquitous technology for application in driving backplanes of organic light-emitting diode displays. Currently all commercial products rely on metal oxides processed via physical vapor deposition methods. Transition to simpler, higher throughput manufacturing methods such as solution-based processes, are currently been explored as cost-effective alternatives. However, developing printable oxide transistors with high carrier mobility and bias-stable operation has proved challenging. Here we show that hybrid multilayer channels composed of alternating ultra-thin layers (≤4 nm) of indium oxide, zinc oxide nanoparticles, ozone-treated polystyrene and a compact zinc oxide layer, all solution-processed in ambient atmosphere, can be used to create TFTs with remarkably high electron mobility (50 cm2/Vs) and record operational stability. Insertion of the ozone-treated polystyrene interlayer is shown to reduce the concentration of electron traps at the metal oxide surfaces and heterointerfaces. The resulting transistors exhibit dramatically enhanced bias stability over 24 h continuous operation and while subjected to large electric field flux density (2.1×10−6 C/cm2) with no adverse effects on the electron mobility. Density functional theory calculations identify the origin of this enhanced stability as the passivation of the oxygen vacancy-related gap states due to interaction between ozonolyzed styrene moieties and the oxides. Our results sets new design guidelines for bias-stress resilient metal oxide transistors.
@article{arxiv.1910.11013,
title = {Hybrid Organic-Metal Oxide Multilayer Channel Transistors with Record Operational Stability},
author = {Yen-Hung Lin and Wen Li and Hendrik Faber and Nikolaos A. Hastas and Dongyoon Khim and Qiang Zhang and Xixiang Zhang and Nikolaos Pliatsikas and Leonidas Tsetseris and Panos A. Patsalas and Donal D. C. Bradley and Wei Huang and Thomas D. Anthopoulos},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1910.11013},
year = {2019}
}