Printed electronics: Liquid crystal molecule that produces high-performance organic FETs

Researchers at Tokyo Institute of Technology have designed a smectic liquid crystal that overcomes many of the challenges posed by organic field effect transistor materials. Crystalline organic semiconductors have attracted a lot of interest for convenient low-cost fabrication by printed electronics. However progress has been stymied by the low thermal durability and reproducibility of these materials. Now researchers at Tokyo Institute of Technology and the Japan Science and Technology Agency have designed a liquid crystal molecule that produces high-performance organic field effect transistors (FETs) with good temperature resilience and relatively low device variability in addition to high mobility. Hiroaki Iino, Takayuki Usui and Jun-ichi Hanna designed a molecule that would incorporate a number of desirable liquid crystal qualities, in particular the smectic E phase. Low ordered liquid crystal phases form droplets at their melting temperature, but the smectic E phase has the advantage of retaining the thin-film shape. They then fabricated organic FETs by spin coating a solution of their material at 110 °C before allowing it to cool. Comparison of the FET characteristics before and after mild annealing revealed a phase transition. Using atomic force microscopy the researchers identified that at around 120°C in the crystal formed a bilayer crystal phase. The ...