Transferred metal electrode films for large-area electronic devices

The evaporation of metal-film gate electrodes for top-gate organic field-effect transistors (OFETs) limits the minimum thickness of the polymer gate dielectric to typically more than 300 nm due to deep hot metal atom penetration and damage of the dielectric. We show here that the self-release layer transfer method recently developed for high-quality graphene transfer is also capable of giving high-quality metal thin-film transfers to produce high-performance capacitors and OFETs with superior dielectric breakdown strength even for ultrathin polymer dielectric films. Dielectric breakdown strengths up to 5-6 MV cm(-1) have been obtained for 50-nm thin films of polystyrene and a cyclic olefin copolymer TOPAS (R) (Zeon). High-quality OFETs with sub-10V operational voltages have been obtained this way using conventional polymer dielectrics and a high-mobility polymer semiconductor poly[2,5-bis(3-tetradecylthiophene-2-yl) thieno[3,2-b] thiophene-2,5-diyl]. The transferred metal films can make reliable contacts without damaging ultrathin polymer films, self-assembled monolayers and graphene, which is not otherwise possible from evaporated or sputtered metal films. (C) 2014 AIP Publishing LLC.