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In this study, a KrF excimer laser with a high-absorption coefficient in metal oxide films and a wavelength of 248 nm was selected for the post-processing of a film and metal oxide thin film transistor (MOTFT). Due to the poor negative bias illumination stress (NBIS) stability of indium gallium zinc oxide thin film transistor (IGZO-TFT) devices, terbium-doped Tb:In2O3 material was selected as the target of this study. The XPS test revealed the presence of both Tb3+ and Tb4+ ions in the Tb:In2O3 film. It was hypothesized that the peak of the laser thermal effect was reduced and the action time was prolonged by the f-f jump of Tb3+ ions and the C-T jump of Tb4+ ions during the laser treatment. Studies related to the treatment of Tb:In2O3 films with different laser energy densities have been carried out. It is shown that as the laser energy density increases, the film density increases, the thickness decreases, the carrier concentration increases, and the optical band gap widens. Terbium has a low electronegativity (1.1 eV) and a high Tb-O dissociation energy (707 kJ/mol), which brings about a large lattice distortion. The Tb:In2O3 films did not show significant crystallization even under laser energy density treatment of up to 250 mJ/cm2. Compared with pure In2O3-TFT, the doping of Tb ions effectively reduces the off-state current (1.16 × 10-11 A vs. 1.66 × 10-12 A), improves the switching current ratio (1.63 × 106 vs. 1.34 × 107) and improves the NBIS stability (ΔVON = -10.4 V vs. 6.4 V) and positive bias illumination stress (PBIS) stability (ΔVON = 8 V vs. 1.6 V).
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A direct soft imprint lithography was proposed to realize the direct fabrication of residue-free, well-shaped functional patterns through a single step. This imprint method requires only a simply prepared isopropanol-treated polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) stamp without any additional resists. Residue-free Ag patterns were successfully fabricated on different substrates by directly imprinting the Ag ink with the isopropanol-treated PDMS stamp. Furthermore, the coffee-ring effect of the imprinting Ag patterns can be eliminated by optimizing the imprinting time, isopropanol-treating time, and imprinting temperatures. Studies show that the residual Ag ink in the contact region can be absorbed by the isopropanol-treated PDMS stamp due to the "like dissolves like" principle. Finally, this method was employed to fabricate the Ag electrodes for the thin-film transistors, attaining a mobility of â¼8 cm2 V-1 s-1, which is comparable to those with vacuum-processed electrodes. This process provides a simple, low-cost, residue-free, coffee-ring-free, and fast patterning method in the field of microelectronics.
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Sensing pressure and temperature are two important functions of human skin that integrate different types of tactile receptors. In this paper, a deformable artificial flexible multi-stimulus-responsive sensor is demonstrated that can distinguish mechanical pressure from temperature by measuring the impedance and the electrical phase at the same frequency without signal interference. The electrical phase, which is used for measuring the temperature, is totally independent of the pressure by controlling the surface micro-shapes and the ion content of the ionic film. By doping the counter-ion exchange reagent into the ionic liquid before pouring, the upper temperature measuring limit increases from 35 to 50 °C, which is higher than the human body temperature and the ambient temperature on Earth. The sensor shows high sensitivity to pressure (up to 0.495 kPa-1) and a wide temperature sensing range (-10 to 50 °C). A multimodal ion-electronic skin (IEM-skin) with an 8 × 8 multi-stimulus-responsive sensor array is fabricated and can successfully sense the distribution of temperature and pressure at the same time. Finally, the sensors are used for monitoring the touching motions of a robot-arm finger controlled by a remote interactive glove and successfully detect the touching states and the temperature changes of different objects.
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BACKGROUND: Electrochromic materials can dynamically change their optical properties (such as transmittance, absorbance, and reflectance under the action of an applied voltage, and their research and application in the visible band have been widely concerned. In recent years, with the continuous development of electrochromic technology, the related research has been gradually extended to the infrared region. OBJECTIVE: This invited review aims to provide an overview of the current status of several inorganic infrared electrochromic materials, to provide some references for future research, and to promote the research and application of electrochromic technology in the infrared region. METHODS: This review summarizes various research results in the field of infrared electrochromic, which includes a detailed literature review and patent search. Starting from the key performance parameters and device structure characteristics of infrared electrochromic devices (ECDs), the research and progress of several types of inorganic infrared electrochromic materials, including metal oxides, plasma nanocrystals, and carbon nanomaterials, are mainly presented, and feasible optimization directions are also discussed. CONCLUSION: We believe that the potential of these materials for civilian and military applications, for example, infrared electrochromic smart windows, infrared stealth/disguise, and thermal control of spacecraft, can be fully exploited by optimizing the materials and their devices to improve their performance.
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In this report, an ammonium metatungstate (AMT) and ferrous chloride [Fe(II)Cl2] electrochromic liquid (ECL) was synthesized using a hydrothermal method, with D2O used as the solvent instead of H2O. The results show that the use of D2O can improve the stability and performance of ECLs. The hydrogen evolution process in electrochromic devices (ECDs) filled with ECL becomes more difficult, while the material exchange process becomes easier. The ECD exhibits a color modulation amplitude of 58%@680 nm at 2 V. After 500 cycles, the device's performance remains above 95% at a current density of 1.5 mA/cm2. Hydrogen bonds in D2O solutions are expected to exhibit stronger forces compared to those in regular H2O solutions. Therefore, we hypothesize that enhancing the strength of hydrogen bonds in H2O solutions is an effective approach for improving the performance and stability of electrochromic solutions.
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In recent years, more and more attention has been paid to flexible thin-film transistors (TFTs). Therefore, we combined HfMgTiYZrOx high-entropy metal oxide and poly(vinyl alcohol) (PVA) organic material to prepare a flexible dielectric layer. We fabricated metal-insulator-metal (MIM) and TFT devices and carried out flexible tests. The test results show that the mixed dielectric layer attains a leakage current of 3.6 × 10-11 A under the bending radius of 5 mm. In the application of the TFT, the device still has good performance after 10â¯000 bends with a mobility of 3.1 cm2 V-1 s-1, an Ion/Ioff of 1.4 × 107, a threshold voltage of 3.3 V, and a threshold swing of 0.20 V/decade. In addition, the average transmittance of the hybrid dielectric layer in the visible range is 90.8%. Therefore, high-entropy PVA hybrid films have high transparency, low leakage current, and good bending resistance and have broad application prospects in transparent and flexible devices.
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Multiwavelength organic lasers have attracted considerable interest in recent years due to the cost efficiency, wide luminescence coverage, and simple processability of organics. In this work, by simply spin coating immiscible polymeric gain media in sequence, dual-wavelength (blue-green or blue-red) amplified spontaneous emission (ASE) was achieved in bilayer devices. The blue emission, water/alcohol-soluble conjugated polyelectrolyte, poly[(9,9-bis(3'-((N,N-dimethyl)-N-ethylammonium)-propyl)-2,7-fluorene)-alt-2,7-(9,9-dioctylfluorene)]dibromide (PFN-Br), was used as the bottom layer. The commercially available nonpolar solvent soluble polymer poly(9,9-dioctylfluorene-co-benzothiadiazole) (F8BT) and its blend with poly(3-hexylthiophene) (P3HT) were used as the top active layers offering green and red emission, respectively. This novel compact configuration, without interlayers between the two active layers, offers potential for developing various applications. The carefully selected top and bottom layer polymers not only meet the conditions of immiscibility and different emission wavelength range but also have a common absorption band in UV, which allows simultaneous blue-green or blue-red dual-color ASE behaviors observed in the bilayer devices under the same 390 nm laser excitation. By introducing two-dimension (2D) square distributed feedback (DFB) gratings with different periods (300 nm for blue, 330 nm for green, and 390 nm for red) as cavities, single mode blue-green (Eth = 245 µJ cm-2) and blue-red (Eth = 189 µJ cm-2) lasers were achieved by focusing the excitation laser spot on different 2D DFB gratings area. Furthermore, we found it possible to gain sufficient light confinement for red emission along its diagonal direction (Λ â¼424 nm), whereas the 2D DFB gratings offer feedback for blue emission from the 300 nm period along the rectangle direction. Therefore, both blue and red lasers were eventually achieved in the same PFN-Br/F8BT:P3HT bilayer device on the single 2D DFB gratings with a period of 300 nm in this work.
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High-performance phototransistor-based solar-blind (200-280 nm) ultraviolet (UV) photodetectors (PDs) are constructed with a low-cost thin-film ZnO/Ga2O3 heterojunction. The optimized PD shows high spectral selectivity (R254/R365 > 1 × 103) with a photo-to-dark current ratio of â¼104, a responsivity of 113 mA/W, a detectivity of 1.25 × 1012 Jones, and a response speed of 41 ms under 254 nm UV light irradiation. It is found that the gate electrode of a three-terminal phototransistor can amplify the responsivity and increase the photo-to-dark current ratio because of the different densities of field-induced electrons at different gate biases. In addition, the built-in electric field at the ZnO/Ga2O3 heterojunction interface can control the distribution of the photoinduced electrons and the total conductivity of the heterojunction, which can further enhance device performance. Together with the simple fabrication process, the achieved results suggest that the three-terminal ZnO/Ga2O3 heterojunction phototransistor is a promising candidate for highly sensitive solar-blind PDs.
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Microelectronic devices are developing rapidly in portability, wearability, and implantability. This puts forward an urgent requirement for the delicate deposition process of materials. Electrohydrodynamic printing has attracted academic and industrial attention in preparing ultrahigh-density microelectronic devices as a new noncontact, direct graphic, and low-loss thin film deposition process. In this work, a printed graphene with narrow line width is realized by combining the electrohydrodynamic printing and surface treatment. The line width of printed graphene on the hydrophobic treatment surface reduced from 80 to 28 µm. The resistivity decreased from 0.949 to 0.263 Ω·mm. Unexpectedly, hydrophobic treatment can effectively induce random stacking of electrohydrodynamic printed graphene, which avoids parallel stacking and agglomeration of graphene sheets. The performance of printed graphene is thus effectively improved. After optimization, a graphene planar supercapacitor with a printed line width of 28 µm is successfully obtained. Its capacitance can reach 5.39 mF/cm2 at 50 mV/s, which is twice higher than that of the untreated devices. The device maintains 84.7% capacitance after 5000 cycles. This work provides a reference for preparing microelectronic devices by ultrahigh precision printing and a new direction for optimizing two-dimensional material properties through stacking adjustment.
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Electrochromic materials have been considered as a new way to achieve energy savings in the building sector due to their potential applications in smart windows, cars, aircrafts, etc. However, the high cost of manufacturing ECDs using the conventional manufacturing methods has limited its commercialization. It is the advantages of low cost as well as resource saving, green environment protection, flexibility and large area production that make printing electronic technology fit for manufacturing electrochromic devices. This paper reviews the progress of research on printed electrochromic devices (ECDs), detailing the preparation of ECDs by screen printing, inkjet printing and 3D printing, using the scientific properties of discrete definition printing method. Up to now, screen printing holds the largest share in the electrochromic industry due to its low cost and large ink output nature, which makes it suitable especially for printing on large surfaces. Though inkjet printing has the advantages of high precision and the highest coloration efficiency (CE) can be up to 542 ± 10 cm2C-1, it has developed smoothly, and has not shown rigid needs. Inkjet printing is suitable for the personalized printing production of high precision and small batch electronic devices. Since 3D printing is a new manufacturing technology in the 21st century, with the characteristics of integrated molding and being highly controllable, which make it suitable for customized printing of complex devices, such as all kinds of sensors, it has gained increasing attention in the past decade. Finally, the possibility of combining screen printing with inkjet printing to produce high performance ECDs is discussed.
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The applications of thin-film transistors (TFTs) based on oxide semiconductors are limited due to instability under negative bias illumination stress (NBIS). Here, we report TFTs based on solution-processed In2O3 semiconductors doped with Pr4+ or Tb4+, which can effectively improve the NBIS stability. The differences between the Pr4+-doped In2O3 (Pr:In2O3) and Tb4+-doped In2O3 (Tb:In2O3) are investigated in detail. The undoped In2O3 TFTs with different annealing temperatures exhibit poor NBIS stability with serious turn-on voltage shift (ΔVon). After doping with Pr4+/Tb4+, the TFTs show greatly improved NBIS stability. As the annealing temperature increases, the Pr:In2O3 TFTs have poorer NBIS stability (ΔVon are -3.2, -4.8, and -4.8 V for annealing temperature of 300, 350, and 400 °C, respectively), while the Tb:In2O3 TFTs have better NBIS stability (ΔVon are -3.6, -3.6, and -1.2 V for annealing temperature of 300, 350, and 400 â, respectively). Further studies reveal that the improvement of the NBIS stability of the Pr4+/Tb4+:In2O3 TFTs is attributed to the absorption of the illuminated light by the Pr/Tb4fn-O2p6 to Pr/Tb 4fn+1-O2p5 charge transfer (CT) transition and downconversion of the light to nonradiative transition with a relatively short relaxation time compared to the ionization process of the oxygen vacancies. The higher NBIS stability of Tb:In2O3 TFTs compared to Pr:In2O3 TFTs is ascribed to the smaller ion radius of Tb4+ and the lower energy level of Tb 4f7 with a isotropic half-full configuration compared to that of Pr 4f1, which would make it easier for the Tb4+ to absorb the visible light than the Pr4+.
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Flexible electronic technology is one of the research hotspots, and numerous wearable devices have been widely used in our daily life. As an important part of wearable devices, flexible sensors can effectively detect various stimuli related to specific environments or biological species, having a very bright development prospect. Therefore, there has been lots of studies devoted to developing high-performance flexible pressure sensors. In addition to developing a variety of materials with excellent performances, the microstructure designs of materials can also effectively improve the performances of sensors, which has brought new ideas to scientists and attracted their attention increasingly. This paper will summarize the flexible pressure sensors based on material microstructure designs in recent years. The paper will mainly discuss the processing methods and characteristics of various sensors with different microstructures, and compare the advantages, disadvantages, and application scenarios of them. At the same time, the main application fields of flexible pressure sensors based on microstructure designs will be listed, and their future development and challenges will be discussed.
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The unbalanced evaporation of solvents in low-temperature sintered inks for printed electronics leads to a series of problems in the actual printing process, including printed pattern distortion, surface cracking, and the coffee ring effect, which has become a serious obstacle to this technique. Here, we present a comprehensive investigation of the influence of the solvent composition, environmental, and sintering conditions on the complicated pattern formation process of reactive silver inks. The results first showed that only inks with a certain wettability of solvents could form well-defined patterns. Then, the solvent composition and ambient humidity can be adjusted to balance the nonequilibrium evaporative flow within the liquid and thus to obtain a flat liquid film. Combined with the rapid UV sintering process, the particle size, porosity, and roughness could be controlled to produce dense and homogeneous silver films. Finally, we successfully printed silver electrodes with a smooth and dense surface (Rqs â¼ 21 nm in 0.8 × 0.8 mm2 area and less than 1% porosity) under an optimized relative humidity (RH) of 50-60% at room temperature with the solvent composition of IPA (isopropanol)/2,3-BD (2,3-butanediol) = 8:2. In addition, we also demonstrated high-performance Pr-IZO (praseodymium-doped indium-zinc oxide) thin film transistors (TFTs) with a mobility (µsat) of 2.14 cm2/V/s and Ion/Ioff ratio of over 107 using source-drain electrodes printed under optimized conditions.
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Capacitors play an increasingly important role in hybrid integrated circuits, while the MIM capacitors with high capacitance density and small thickness can meet the needs of high integration. Generally speaking, the films prepared with a single metal oxide dielectric often achieve a breakthrough in one aspect of performance, but dielectric layers are required to be improved to get better performance in leakage current, capacitance density, and transmittance simultaneously in modern electronic devices. Therefore, we optimized the performance of the dielectric layers by using multiple metal oxides. We combined zirconia, yttria, magnesium oxide, alumina, and hafnium oxide with the solution method to find the best combination of these five metal oxides. The physical properties of the multi-component films were measured by atomic force microscopy (AFM), ultraviolet-visible spectrophotometer, and other instruments. The results show that the films prepared by multi-component metal oxides have good transmittance and low roughness. The thicknesses of all films in our experiment are less than 100 nm. Then, metal-insulator-metal (MIM) devices were fabricated. In addition, we characterized the electrical properties of MIM devices. We find that multi-component oxide films can achieve good performances in several aspects. The aluminum-magnesium-yttrium-zirconium-oxide (AMYZOx) group of 0.6 M has the lowest leakage current density, which is 5.03 × 10-8 A/cm2 @ 1.0 MV/cm. The hafnium-magnesium-yttrium-zirconium-oxide (HMYZOx) group of 0.8 M has a maximum capacitance density of 208 nF/cm2. The films with a small thickness and a high capacitance density are very conducive to high integration. Therefore, we believe that multi-component films have potential in the process of dielectric layers and great application prospects in highly integrated electronic devices.
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Recently, tin oxide (SnO2) has been the preferred thin film material for semiconductor devices such as thin-film transistors (TFTs) due to its low cost, non-toxicity, and superior electrical performance. However, the high oxygen vacancy (VO) concentration leads to poor performance of SnO2 thin films and devices. In this paper, with tetraethyl orthosilicate (TEOS) as the Si source, which can decompose to release heat and supply energy when annealing, Si doped SnO2 (STO) films and inverted staggered STO TFTs were successfully fabricated by a solution method. An XPS analysis showed that Si doping can effectively inhibit the formation of VO, thus reducing the carrier concentration and improving the quality of SnO2 films. In addition, the heat released from TEOS can modestly lower the preparation temperature of STO films. By optimizing the annealing temperature and Si doping content, 350 °C annealed STO TFTs with 5 at.% Si exhibited the best device performance: Ioff was as low as 10-10 A, Ion/Ioff reached a magnitude of 104, and Von was 1.51 V. Utilizing TEOS as an Si source has a certain reference significance for solution-processed metal oxide thin films in the future.
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Over the past few decades, electrohydrodynamic (EHD) printing has proved to be an environmentally friendly, cost-effective and powerful tool in manufacturing electronic devices with a wire width of less than 50 µm. In particular, EHD printing is highly valued for the printing of ultrafine wire-width silver electrodes, which is important in manufacturing large-area, high-resolution micron-scale or even nanoscale structures. In this paper, we compare two methods of surface modification of glass substrate: UV treatment and oxygen plasma treatment. We found that oxygen plasma was better than UV treatment in terms of wettability and uniformity. Secondly, we optimized the annealing temperature parameter, and found that the conductivity of the electrode was the highest at 200 °C due to the smoothing silver electrode and the oxidation-free internal microstructure. Thirdly, we used EHD printing to fabricate silver electrodes on the glass substrate. Due to the decrease of conductivity as a result of the skin effect and the decrease of silver content, we found that driving voltage dropped, line width decreased, and the conductivity of silver line decreased. After the optimization of the EHD printing process, Ag electrode line width and conductivity reached 19.42 ± 0.24 µm and 6.01 × 106 S/m, demonstrating the potential of electro-hydraulic printing in the manufacturing of flexible, wearable, high-density, low-power-consumption electronics.
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The active layer of metal oxide semiconductor thin film transistor (MOS-TFT) prepared by solution method, with the advantages of being a low cost and simple preparation process, usually needs heat treatment to improve its performance. Laser treatment has the advantages of high energy, fast speed, less damage to the substrate and controllable treatment area, which is more suitable for flexible and large-scale roll-to-roll preparation than thermal treatment. This paper mainly introduces the basic principle of active layer thin films prepared by laser treatment solution, including laser photochemical cracking of metastable bonds, laser thermal effect, photoactivation effect and laser sintering of nanoparticles. In addition, the application of laser treatment in the regulation of MOS-TFT performance is also described, including the effects of laser energy density, treatment atmosphere, laser wavelength and other factors on the performance of active layer thin films and MOS-TFT devices. Finally, the problems and future development trends of laser treatment technology in the application of metal oxide semiconductor thin films prepared by solution method and MOS-TFT are summarized.
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Silver nanowire (AgNW) conductive film fabricated by solution processing was investigated as an alternative to indium tin oxide (ITO) in flexible transparent electrodes. In this paper, we studied a facile and effective method by electrodepositing Al2O3 on the surface of AgNWs. As a result, flexible transparent electrodes with improved stability could be obtained by electrodepositing Al2O3. It was found that, as the annealing temperature rises, the Al2O3 coating layer can be transformed from Al2O3·H2O into a denser amorphous state at 150 °C. By studying the increase of electrodeposition temperature, it was observed that the transmittance of the AgNW-Al2O3 composite films first rose to the maximum at 70 °C and then decreased. With the increase of the electrodeposition time, the figure of merit (FoM) of the composite films increased and reached the maximum when the time was 40 s. Through optimizing the experimental parameters, a high-stability AgNW flexible transparent electrode using polyimide (PI) as a substrate was prepared without sacrificing optical and electrical performance by electrodepositing at -1.1 V and 70 °C for 40 s with 0.1 mol/L Al(NO3)3 as the electrolyte, which can withstand a high temperature of 250 °C or 250,000 bending cycles with a bending radius of 4 mm.
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Manipulating the molecular orbital properties of excited states and the subsequent relaxation processes can greatly alter the emission behaviors of luminophores. Herein we report a vivid example of this, with luminescence conversion from thermally activated delayed fluorescence (TADF) to ultralong room-temperature phosphorescence (URTP) via a facile substituent effect on a rigid benzothiazino phenothiazine tetraoxide (BTPO) core. Pristine BTPO with multiple heteroatoms shows obvious intramolecular charge transfer (ICT) excited states with small exchange energy, featuring TADF. Via delicately functionalizing the BTPO core with peripheral moieties, the excited states of the BTPO derivatives become a hybridized local and charge transfer (HLCT) state in the S1 state and a local excitation (LE) dominated HLCT state in the T1 state, with enlarged energy bandgaps. Upon dispersion in a polymer matrix, the BTPO derivatives exhibit a persistent bright green afterglow with long lifetimes of up to 822 ms and decent quantum yields of up to 11.6%.
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The praseodymium-doped indium-zinc-oxide (PrIZO) thin film transistor (TFT) shows broad application prospects in the new generation of display technologies due to its high performance and high stability. However, traditional device performance evaluation methods need to be carried out after the end of the entire preparation process, which leads to the high-performance device preparation process that takes a lot of time and costs. Therefore, there is a lack of effective methods to optimize the device preparation process. In this paper, the effect of sputtering oxygen partial pressure on the properties of PrIZO thin film was studied, and the quality of PrIZO thin film was quickly evaluated by the microwave photoconductivity decay (µ-PCD) method. The µ-PCD results show that as the oxygen partial pressure increases, the peak first increases and then decreases, while the D value shows the opposite trend. The quality of PrIZO thin film prepared under 10% oxygen partial pressure is optimal due to its low localized defect states. The electric performance of PrIZO TFTs prepared under different oxygen partial pressures is consistent with the µ-PCD results. The optimal PrIZO TFT prepared under 10% oxygen partial pressure exhibits good electric performance with a threshold voltage (Vth) of 1.9 V, a mobility (µsat) of 24.4 cm2·V-1·s-1, an Ion/Ioff ratio of 2.03 × 107, and a subthreshold swing (SS) of 0.14 V·dec-1.