Mitigating Meniscus Instabilities in Solution-Sheared Polymer Films for Organic Field-Effect Transistors

Cecilia Teixeira Da Rocha, Ge Qu, Xuegeng Yang, Rishi Shivhare, Mike Hambsch, Ying Diao, Stefan C.B. Mannsfeld

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

Semiconducting donor-acceptor copolymers are considered to be a promising material class for solution-coated, large-scale organic electronic applications. A large number of works have shown that the best-performing organic field-effect transistors (OFETs) are obtained on low-surface-energy substrates. The meniscus instabilities that occur when coating on such surfaces considerably limit the effective deposition speeds. This represents a limiting factor for the upscaling of device fabrication for mass production, an issue that needs to be addressed if organic electronic devices are ever to become commercially relevant. In this work, we present a method to increase the accessible window of coating speeds for the solution shearing of donor-acceptor semiconductor polymers for the fabrication of OFETs. By incorporating a piezo crystal that is capable of producing high-frequency vibrations into the coating head, we are able to mitigate contact line instabilities due to the depinning of the contact line, thereby suppressing the commonly encountered "stick-and-slip" phenomenon.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)30079-30088
Number of pages10
JournalACS Applied Materials and Interfaces
Volume11
Issue number33
DOIs
StatePublished - Aug 21 2019

Keywords

  • large-area fabrication
  • meniscus instabilities
  • organic field-effect transistors
  • solution shearing
  • vibration

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • General Materials Science

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Mitigating Meniscus Instabilities in Solution-Sheared Polymer Films for Organic Field-Effect Transistors'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this