The development of high-performance multifunctional polymer-based electronic circuits is a major step towards future flexible electronics. Here, we demonstrate a tunable approach to fabricate such devices based on rationally designed dielectric super-lattice structures with photochromic azo-benzene molecules. These nanodielectrics possessing ionic, molecular, and atomic polarization are utilized in polymer thin-film transistors (TFTs) to realize high performance electronics with p-type field-effect mobility exceeding 2 cm^2/(V.s). A crossover in the transport mechanism from electrostatic dipolar disorder to ionic-induced disorder is observed in the transistor characteristics over a range of temperatures. The facile supramolecular design allows the possibility to optically control the extent of molecular and ionic polarization in the ultra-thin nanodielectric. Thus, we demonstrate a three-fold increase in the capacitance from 0.1 uF/cm^2 to 0.34 uF/cm^2, which results in a 200% increase in TFT channel current.
@article{arxiv.1806.02223,
title = {Self-Assembled Photochromic Molecular Dipoles for High Performance Polymer Thin-Film Transistors},
author = {Satyaprasad P. Senanayak and Vinod K. Sangwan and Julian J. McMorrow and Ken Everaerts and Zhihua Chen and Antonio Facchetti and Mark C. Hersam and Tobin J. Marks and K. S. Narayan},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1806.02223},
year = {2018}
}