Satria Zulkarnaen Bisri

Outlook and Emerging Semiconducting Materials for Ambipolar Transistors

Ambipolar or bipolar transistors are transistors in which both holes and electrons are mobile inside the conducting channel. This device allows switching among several states: the hole-dominated on-state, the off-state, and the electron-dominated on-state. In the past year, it has attracted great interest in exotic semiconductors, such as organic semiconductors, nanostructured materials, and carbon nanotubes. The ability to utilize both holes and electrons inside one device opens new possibilities for the development of more compact complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS) circuits, and new kinds of optoelectronic device, namely, ambipolar light-emitting transistors. This progress report highlights the recent progresses in the field of ambipolar transistors, both from the fundamental physics and application viewpoints. Attention is devoted to the challenges that should be faced for the realization of ambipolar transistors with different material systems, beginning with the understanding of the importance of interface modification, which heavily affects injections and trapping of both holes and electrons. The recent development of advanced gating applications, including ionic liquid gating, that open up more possibility to realize ambipolar transport in materials in which one type of charge carrier is highly dominant is highlighted. Between the possible applications of ambipolar field-effect transistors, we focus on ambipolar light-emitting transistors. We put this new device in the framework of its prospective for general lightings, embedded displays, current-driven laser, as well as for photonics-electronics interconnection.

Conjugated Polymer-Assisted Dispersion of Single-Wall Carbon Nanotubes: The Power of Polymer Wrapping

The future application of single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWNTs) in electronic (nano)devices is closely coupled to the availability of pure, semiconducting SWNTs and preferably, their defined positioning on suited substrates. Commercial carbon nanotube raw mixtures contain metallic as well as semiconducting tubes of different diameter and chirality. Although many techniques such as density gradient ultracentrifugation, dielectrophoresis, and dispersion by surfactants or polar biopolymers have been developed, so-called conjugated polymer wrapping is one of the most promising and powerful purification and discrimination strategies. The procedure involves debundling and dispersion of SWNTs by wrapping semiflexible conjugated polymers, such as poly(9,9-dialkylfluorene)s (PFx) or regioregular poly(3-alkylthiophene)s (P3AT), around the SWNTs, and is accompanied by SWNT discrimination by diameter and chirality. Thereby, the π-conjugated backbone of the conjugated polymers interacts with the two-dimensional, graphene-like π-electron surface of the nanotubes and the solubilizing alkyl side chains of optimal length support debundling and dispersion in organic solvents. Careful structural design of the conjugated polymers allows for a selective and preferential dispersion of both small and large diameter SWNTs or SWNTs of specific chirality. As an example, with polyfluorenes as dispersing agents, it was shown that alkyl chain length of eight carbons are favored for the dispersion of SWNTs with diameters of 0.8-1.2 nm and longer alkyls with 12-15 carbons can efficiently interact with nanotubes of increased diameter up to 1.5 nm. Polar side chains at the PF backbone produce dispersions with increased SWNT concentration but, unfortunately, cause reduction in selectivity. The selectivity of the dispersion process can be monitored by a combination of absorption, photoluminescence, and photoluminescence excitation spectroscopy, allowing identification of nanotubes with specific coordinates [(n,m) indices]. The polymer wrapping strategy enables the generation of SWNT dispersions containing exclusively semiconducting nanotubes. Toward the applications in electronic devices, until now most applied approach is a direct processing of such SWNT dispersions into the active layer of network-type thin film field effect transistors. However, to achieve promising transistor performance (high mobility and on-off ratio) careful removal of the wrapping polymer chains seems crucial, for example, by washing or ultracentrifugation. More defined positioning of the SWNTs can be accomplished in directed self-assembly procedures. One possible strategy uses diblock copolymers containing a conjugated polymer block as dispersing moiety and a second block for directed self-assembly, for example, a DNA block for specific interaction with complementary DNA strands. Another strategy utilizes reactive side chains for controlled anchoring onto patterned surfaces (e.g., by interaction of thiol-terminated alkyl side chains with gold surfaces). A further promising application of purified SWNT dispersions is the field of organic (all-carbon) or hybrid solar cell devices.

Semiconducting single-walled carbon nanotubes on demand by polymer wrapping

Efficient selection of semiconducting SWCNTs of large diameter range (0.8-1.6 nm) on demand is demonstrated. Different diameters of SWCNT are systematically selected by tuning the alkyl side-chain lengths of the wrapping polymers of similar backbone. The exceptional quality and high concentration of the SWCNTs is validated by the outstanding optical properties and the highly performing random network ambipolar field-effect transistors.

High Performance Ambipolar Field‐Effect Transistor of Random Network Carbon Nanotubes

Ambipolar field-effect transistors of random network carbon nanotubes are fabricated from an enriched dispersion utilizing a conjugated polymer as the selective purifying medium. The devices exhibit high mobility values for both holes and electrons (3 cm(2) /V·s) with a high on/off ratio (10(6) ). The performance demonstrates the effectiveness of this process to purify semiconducting nanotubes and to remove the residual polymer.

Organic single-crystal light-emitting field-effect transistors

Current-injected laser oscillation in an organic crystal remains as a big challenge to be solved. The author addresses several key issues on this to make a breakthrough. Those include materials choice, device constitutions, resonator designing, determination of optical constants of organic crystals, etc. From among various device constitutions, the author focuses on light-emitting field-effect transistors.

5.2% efficient PbS nanocrystal Schottky solar cells

The impact of post-synthetic treatments of nanocrystals (NCs) on the performance of Schottky solar cells, where the active PbS nanocrystal layer is sandwiched directly between two electrodes, is investigated. By monitoring the amount of ligands on the surface of the nanocrystals through Fourier Transform Infrared (FTIR) measurements, we find that optimized processing conditions can lead to high current density and thus to an increase in overall efficiency. Our devices reach an efficiency of 5.2%, which is the highest reported using a PbS nanocrystal Schottky junction. These results demonstrate that even by using the simplest device architecture, accurate post-synthetic treatments result in substantial improvements in the performance. By drawing a direct correlation between ligand-to-NC ratio in the starting PbS solution and the device parameters, we provide important insights on how to gain experimental control for the fabrication of efficient PbS solar cells.

Low Driving Voltage and High Mobility Ambipolar Field-Effect Transistors with PbS Colloidal Nanocrystals

PbS colloidal nanocrystals (NCs) are promising materials for optoelectronic devices, due to their size-tunable properties. However, there is still minimal understanding of their charge transport mechanism. Through a combination of ligand selections, ambipolar transistor structure optimization, and electrochemical gating usage, high carrier mobility is achieved. The outstanding device characteristics open possibility to investigate the intrinsic transport properties of PbS NCs.

P-i-n homojunction in organic light-emitting transistors

A new method for investigating light-emitting property in organic devices is demonstrated. We apply the ambipolar light-emitting transistors (LETS) to directly observe the recombination zone, and find a strong link between the transistor performance and the zone size. This finding unambiguously indicates that the light emission comes from the electric-field-induced p-i-n homojunction in ambipolar LETs.

Carbon nanotube network ambipolar field-effect transistors with 10(8) on/off ratio.

Polymer wrapping is a highly effective method of selecting semiconducting carbon nanotubes and dispersing them in solution. Semi-aligned semiconducting carbon nanotube networks are obtained by blade coating, an effective and scalable process. The field-effect transistor (FET) performance can be tuned by the choice of wrapping polymer, and the polymer concentration modifies the FET transport characteristics, leading to a record on/off ratio of 10(8) .

Electron transport in rubrene single-crystal transistors

We report a study of impurity effects on the electron transport of rubrene single crystals. A significant improvement of electron carrier mobility up to 0.81 cm2/V s is achieved by performing multiple purifications of single crystals and device aging inside an N2-filled glove box. The hole/electron mobility ratio obtained is in good agreement with the reported theoretical calculation, suggesting that the intrinsic electron transport of organic semiconductors is also exploitable in a manner similar to that of hole transport.