Kwang Hee Cheon

Analysis of charge transport in high-mobility diketopyrrolopyrole polymers by space charge limited current and time of flight methods

The hole mobility of the widely studied diketopyrrolopyrole-based polymers (PDPPDTSE) was examined using space charge limited current (SCLC) and time of flight (TOF) methods. The mobility of the hole-only device based on PDPPDTSE was found to be dependent upon the e-field over the range of 10−3 to 10−2 cm2 V−1 s−1 with nearly identical Poole–Frenkel coefficients. In addition, we found that the mobility strongly depended on the thickness of the PDPPDTSE. By analyzing the temperature dependence of transport characteristics, we argued that the charge transport in this polymer was greatly influenced by trap distribution at the electrode/semiconductor interface.

Thin Film Transistor Gas Sensors Incorporating High-Mobility Diketopyrrolopyrole-Based Polymeric Semiconductor Doped with Graphene Oxide

In this work, we fabricated a diketopyrrolopyrole-based donor-acceptor copolymer composite film. This is a high-mobility semiconductor component with a functionalized-graphene-oxide (GO) gas-adsorbing dopant, used as an active layer in gas-sensing organic-field-effect transistor (OFET) devices. The GO content of the composite film was carefully controlled so that the crystalline orientation of the semiconducting polymer could be conserved, without compromising its gas-adsorbing ability. The resulting optimized device exhibited high mobility (>1 cm(2) V(-1) s(-1)) and revealed sensitive response during programmed exposure to various polar organic molecules (i.e., ethanol, acetone, and acetonitrile). This can be attributed to the high mobility of polymeric semiconductors, and also to their high surface-to-volume ratio of GO. The operating mechanism of the gas sensing GO-OFET is fully discussed in conjunction with charge-carrier trap theory. It was found that each transistor parameter (e.g., mobility, threshold voltage), responds independently to each gas molecule, which enables high selectivity of GO-OFETs for various gases. Furthermore, we also demonstrated practical GO-OFET devices that operated at low voltage (<1.5 V), and which successfully responded to gas exposure.

High Charge-Carrier Mobility of 2.5 cm(2) V(-1) s(-1) from a Water-Borne Colloid of a Polymeric Semiconductor via Smart Surfactant Engineering.

Semiconducting polymer nanoparticles dispersed in water are synthesized by a novel method utilizing non-ionic surfactants. By developing a smart surfactant engineering technique involving a selective post-removal process of surfactants, an unprecedentedly high mobility of 2.51 cm(2) V(-1) s(-1) from a water-borne colloid is demonstrated for the first time.

Wafer-scale and environmentally-friendly deposition methodology for extremely uniform, high-performance transistor arrays with an ultra-low amount of polymer semiconductors

We report on a new class of microliter-scale solution processes for fabricating highly uniform and large-area transistor arrays with extremely low consumption of semiconducting polymers. These processes are accomplished by applying a vertical phase separation of polymers with an environmentally benign solvent, a random copolymerization strategy between two highly conductive repeating units, and a meniscus-dragging deposition technique. The successful realization of these three processes, as confirmed by the structural and morphological in-depth characterizations, has enabled the fabrication of high-performance polymeric field-effect transistors that were uniformly distributed, without a single failure, on a 4 inch wafer using only 40 μg of semiconducting polymers. The resulting transistor arrays showed an average mobility of 0.28 cm2 V−1 s−1, with a low standard deviation of 0.04, as well as ultra-uniform near-zero threshold voltages. Our simple strategy shows great promise for fabricating large-scale organic electronic devices in the future using a truly low-cost process.