Prospects and limitations of Organic Thin Film Transistors (OTFTs)

Abstract

Organic Transistor (OT) modeling, fabrication and applicability has undergone remarkable progress during last ten years. Organic Thin Film Transistors (OTFTs) have received significant attention recently because of their considerable utility. They can be fabricated at lower temperature and significantly reduced cost as compared to Hydrogenated Amorphous Silicon Thin Film Transistors (a-Si: H TFTs). Fabrication of OTFTs at low temperature allows utilization of wide range of substrates, thereby permitting usage of organic transistors as future candidate for many low-cost electronics applications that require flexible polymeric substrates such as RFID tags, smart cards, electronic paper, and active matrix flat panel displays. This paper provides detailed insight of OTFTs, their operating principles, device materials and various structures such as Top Gate Top Contact (TGTC), Top Gate Bottom Contact (TGBC), Bottom Gate Top Contact (BGTC) and Bottom Gate Bottom Contact (BGBC). Although OTFTs find tremendous and widespread applications, but is marred by few limitations related to factors such as speed, compatibility, stability, degradability and variability. This paper comprehensively discusses the performance and limitations of OTFTs. © 2012 Springer-Verlag GmbH.