A n-type, Stable Electrolyte Gated Organic Transistor Based on a Printed Polymer

Abstract

Electrolyte-gated organic transistors (EGOTs) are promising and versatile devices for next-generation biosensors, neuromorphic systems, and low-voltage electronics. They are particularly indicated for applications where stable operation in aqueous environment and cost-effective manufacturing are required. Indeed, EGOTs can be fabricated through low-cost, large area, and scalable techniques, such as printing, from a large portfolio of solution processable organic materials, which are often able to stably operate in water or physiological solutions. Despite a large number of solution processable EGOTs have been reported in the literature so far, only a few are based on printed semiconductors, with no examples of digitally printed, i.e., inkjet printed, n-type devices, which would easily enable complementary architectures. In this work, we propose the first example of a n-type electrolyte gated organic transistor based on an inkjet printed polymer. The proposed device shows a high stability when operated in water and requires only 3 hours of conditioning to produce a stable response, a much faster dynamic than in the case of printed polymers currently tested for p-type EGOTs. As a proof-of-concept, the proposed printed n-type EGOT is successfully integrated with a printed single-walled carbon-nanotubes based p-type device in a logic inverter, demonstrating the possibility to build simple water-gated digital electronic circuits.