High mobility top-gated pentacene thin-film transistors

A common device geometry for measuring the electrical characteristics of organic semiconductors is the thin-film organic field-effect transistor (OTFT). Mostly for reasons of cost, convenience, and availability, this usually involves depositing the organic material on a prefabricated gate structure such as Si/SiO2, the surface chemistry of which is often modified with self-assembled monolayers. The interactions between these surfaces and the deposited organic can have a profound effect on thin-film growth and the resulting electrical characteristics since most of the charge transport in these structures occurs near the organic-insulator interface. An alternative to this traditional technique is to assemble the transistor on top of the organic semiconductor. We have used chemical-vapor deposition of the polymeric dielectric material parylene to create pentacene OTFTs with gate electrodes both on top of and below the semiconductor film, with field-effect mobilities as high as 0.1 cm(2)/V s and I-on/I-off ratios greater than 10(6) in the top-gated OTFTs. Comparing the electronic properties of top- and bottom-gate structures yields insight into the charge transport characteristics as well as the effects of device geometry, contacts, and surface roughness of the organic thin film. (c) 2005 American Institute of Physics.