Improving organic transistor performance with Schottky contacts

Abstract
Organic field-effect transistors(OFETs) with non-Ohmic contacts, e.g., pentacene with goldelectrodes, exhibit a linearly growing threshold voltage with increased film thickness due to tunnel injection [R. Schroeder et al., Appl. Phys. Lett. 83, 3201 (2003)]. In this letter, we demonstrate gold/pentacene OFETs with a low threshold voltage independent of pentacene thickness. By doping the pentacene in the contact area with FeCl 3 (iron-III-chloride), the metal-insulator-type tunneling barrier was changed to a metal-semiconductor Schottky barrier. Since the injection through a Schottky barrier depends on the potential and not on the electric field, the threshold voltage is no longer a function of the semiconductor thickness. Through selective doping of the area under the electrode, the channel remains undoped, and large on/off ratios are retained.