Aerosol jet printed, low voltage, electrolyte gated carbon nanotube ring oscillators with sub-5 µs stage delays.

A central challenge for printed electronics is to achieve high operating frequencies (short transistor switching times) at low supply biases compatible with thin film batteries. In this report, we demonstrate partially printed five-stage ring oscillators with >20 kHz operating frequencies and stage delays <5 µs at supply voltages below 3 V. The fastest ring oscillator achieved 1.2 µs delay time at 2 V supply. The inverter stages in these ring oscillators were based on ambipolar thin film transistors (TFTs) employing semiconducting, single-walled carbon nanotube (CNT) networks and a high capacitance (∼1 µF/cm(2)) ion gel electrolyte as the gate dielectric. All materials except the source and drain electrodes were aerosol jet printed. The TFTs exhibited high electron and hole mobilities (∼20 cm(2)/(V s)) and ON/OFF current ratios (up to 10(5)). Inverter switching times t were systematically characterized as a function of transistor channel length and ionic conductivity of the gel dielectric, demonstrating that both the semiconductor and the ion gel play a role in switching speed. Quantitative scaling analysis suggests that with suitable optimization low voltage, printed ion gel gated CNT inverters could operate at frequencies on the order of 1 MHz.

Aerosol-jet-printed, 1 volt H-bridge drive circuit on plastic with integrated electrochromic pixel.

In this report, we demonstrate a printed, flexible, and low-voltage circuit that successfully drives a polymer electrochromic (EC) pixel as large as 4 mm(2) that is printed on the same substrate. All of the key components of the drive circuitry, namely, resistors, capacitors, and transistors, were aerosol-jet-printed onto a plastic foil; metallic electrodes and interconnects were the only components prepatterned on the plastic by conventional photolithography. The large milliampere drive currents necessary to switch a 4 mm(2) EC pixel were controlled by printed electrolyte-gated transistors (EGTs) that incorporate printable ion gels for the gate insulator layers and poly(3-hexylthiophene) for the semiconductor channels. Upon application of a 1 V input pulse, the circuit switches the printed EC pixel ON (red) and OFF (blue) two times in approximately 4 s. The performance of the circuit and the behavior of the individual resistors, capacitors, EGTs, and the EC pixel are analyzed as functions of the printing parameters and operating conditions.

Hopping transport and the Hall effect near the insulator-metal transition in electrochemically gated poly(3-hexylthiophene) transistors.

Despite 35 years of investigation, much remains to be understood regarding charge transport in semiconducting polymers, including the ultimate limits on their conductivity. Recently developed ion gel gating techniques provide a unique opportunity to study such issues at very high charge carrier density. Here we have probed the benchmark polymer semiconductor poly(3-hexylthiophene) at electrochemically induced three-dimensional hole densities approaching 10(21) cm(-3) (up to 0.2 holes per monomer). Analysis of the hopping conduction reveals a remarkable phenomenon where wavefunction delocalization and Coulomb gap collapse are disrupted by doping-induced disorder, suppressing the insulator-metal transition, even at these extreme charge densities. Nevertheless, at the highest dopings, we observe, for the first time in a polymer transistor, a clear Hall effect with the expected field, temperature and gate voltage dependencies. The data indicate that at such mobilities (~0.8 cm(2)V(-1) s(-1)), despite the extensive disorder, these polymers lie close to a regime of truly diffusive band-like transport.

Printed, sub-3V digital circuits on plastic from aqueous carbon nanotube inks.

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 microm channel lengths display ambipolar transport with electron and hole mobilities >20 cm(2)/V.s; these devices form the basis of printed inverters, NAND gates, and ring oscillators on both polyimide and SiO(2) substrates. Five-stage ring oscillators achieve frequencies >2 kHz at supply voltages of 2.5 V, corresponding to stage delay times of 50 micros. This performance represents a substantial improvement for printed circuitry fabricated from functional liquid inks.