Tomo Sakanoue

High Yield, Single Droplet Electrode Arrays for Nanoscale Printed Electronics

In this work we demonstrate two building blocks of a scalable manufacturing technology for nanoscale electronic devices based on direct-write printing: an architecture for high-yield printing of electrode gaps with 100 nm dimension and a low-temperature silver complex ink for integration of organic materials with high conductivity metal interconnects. We use single printed droplets that are made to dewet slowly from each other to allow reliable, high yield patterning even in the presence of certain surface defects.

Electrical characteristics of single-component ambipolar organic field-effect transistors and effects of air exposure on them

We investigated the electrical characteristics of single-component ambipolar organic field-effect transistors (OFETs) by controlling the device structure and preparation and the measurement conditions. Six organic semiconductor materials (copper-phthalocyanine, tris-(8-hydroxyquinoline)aluminum (Alq3), alpha-sexithiophene, 4-4′-bis-styrylphenyl, 2,7-diphenyl[1]benzothieno[3,2-b]benzothiophene, or a photopolymerized polydiacethylene derivative (PDA) were used as the active layer, and all were found to transport both holes and electrons. The PDA-based FETs had the highest hole and electron mobilities (0.12 and 0.025 cm2/V s, respectively). We also investigated the effect of air exposure on the OFETs. The hole mobility was barely affected by the exposure while the electron mobility was significantly affected. The threshold voltage for p-channel operation was shifted by the exposure while that for n-channel operation was not, indicating that the hole density in the active layer is increased by air exposure wh...

Ambipolar light-emitting organic field-effect transistors using a wide-band-gap blue-emitting small molecule

The authors applied a wide-band-gap (2.9eV) molecule of 4,-4′-bis(styryl)biphenyl (BSBP) as an active layer in light-emitting organic field-effect transistors. They found that BSBP provided both relatively high field-effect hole mobility of 0.01cm2∕Vs and photoluminescence efficiency of 20% in thin film. They achieved ambipolar operation by without breaking vacuum through devices’ preparation and measurements, applying aluminum contacts, and inserting a hydroxyl-free poly(methylmethacrylate) layer, and light emission was observed when the device was operated in the ambipolar mode. The results presented here will open the way to fabricating efficient light-emitting transistors with high mobility.

Charge separation and transport behavior of a two-dimensional charge sheet at organic donor-acceptor heterointerfaces

Charge separation and transport behavior were investigated at an organic heterolayered interface consisting of a 4,4′,4″-tris[3-methylphenyl(phenyl)amino] triphenylamine (m-MTDATA) organic donor and a hexadecafluoro-copper-phthalocyanine (F16CuPc) organic acceptor. A two-dimensional charge sheet of electron-hole pairs was induced due to the formation of charge-transfer complexes at the heterointerface. The induced charges could be separated by application of an electric field perpendicular to the heterointerface. The charge-separation behavior was independent of the work function of the contact electrodes but was strongly dependent on the energy-level alignment between the highest occupied molecular orbital of the donor molecules and the lowest unoccupied molecular orbital of the acceptor molecules. This enabled the preparation of an organic light-emitting diode without injecting holes from the anode. The charge-transport behavior along the heterointerface was also investigated by fabricating laterally ar...

Alignment-free process for asymmetric contact electrodes and their application in light-emitting organic field-effect transistors

We developed an alignment-free process for asymmetric contacts of Au and Al and applied it to light-emitting organic field-effect transistors. Because electrons were injected efficiently from Al contacts, the emission intensity and onset voltages for light were significantly better than those in a device with conventional Au∕Cr contacts. Moreover, a device with 1μm channel length asymmetric contacts of Au and Al showed about 50 times higher current than that of the device with conventional Au∕Cr contacts. This significant improvement can be ascribed to both dual space-charge formation of holes and electrons and low carrier injection barriers.