High-speed hybrid complementary ring oscillators based on solution-processed organic and amorphous metal oxide semiconductors

Solution-processable organic thin-film transistors are needed for device applications. Here, solution-processed organic semiconductors and amorphous metal oxide semiconductors are integrated into a transistor, with five-stage complementary ring oscillators demonstrated. Solution-processed single-crystal organic semiconductors (OSCs) and amorphous metal oxide semiconductors (MOSs) are promising for high-mobility p- and n-channel thin-film transistors (TFTs), respectively. Organic-inorganic hybrid complementary circuits hence have great potential to satisfy practical requirements. However, some chemical incompatibilities between OSCs and MOSs, such as heat and chemical resistance, make it difficult to rationally integrate TFTs based on solution-processed OSC and MOS onto the same substrates. Here, we report a rational integration method based on the solution-processed semiconductors by carefully managing the device configuration and the deposition and patterning techniques from a materials point of view. The balanced high performances as well as the uniform fabrication of the TFTs led to densely integrated five-stage ring oscillators with a short propagation delay of 1.3 mu s per stage.