Abstract
Printing electronic components on plastic foils with functional liquid inks is an attractive approach for achieving flexible and low-cost circuitry for applications such as bendable displays and large-area sensors. The challenges for printed electronics, however, include characteristically slow switching frequencies and associated high supply voltages, which together impede widespread application. Combining printable high-capacitance dielectrics with printable high-mobility semiconductors could potentially solve these problems. Here we demonstrate fast, flexible digital circuits based on semiconducting carbon nanotube (CNT) networks and high-capacitance ion gel gate dielectrics, which were patterned by jet printing of liquid inks. Ion gel-gated CNT thin-film transistors (TFTs) with 50 μm channel lengths display ambipolar transport with electron and hole mobilities >20 cm2/V · s; these devices form the basis of printed inverters, NAND gates, and ring oscillators on both polyimide and SiO2 substrates. Five-stage ring oscillators achieve frequencies >2 kHz at supply voltages of 2.5 V, corresponding to stage delay times of 50 μs. This performance represents a substantial improvement for printed circuitry fabricated from functional liquid inks.
Original language | English (US) |
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Pages (from-to) | 4388-4395 |
Number of pages | 8 |
Journal | ACS nano |
Volume | 4 |
Issue number | 8 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Aug 24 2010 |
Keywords
- Ambipolar
- Carbon nanotube
- Delay time
- Flexible electronics
- Ion gel
- Printed electronics
- Thin-film transistor
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Materials Science(all)
- Engineering(all)
- Physics and Astronomy(all)