The present study reports a two-level multivariate analysis to optimise the production of anodised aluminium oxide (Al2O3) dielectric films for zinc oxide thin-film transistor (TFTs). Fourteen performance parameters were measured and Analysis Of Variance (ANOVA) of the combined responses has been applied to identify how the Al2O3 dielectric fabrication process influences the electrical properties of the TFTs. Using this approach, the levels for the manufacturing factors to achieve optimal overall device performance have been identified and ranked. The cross-checked analysis of the TFT performance parameters demonstrated that the appropriate control of the anodisation process can have a higher impact on TFT performance than the use of traditional methods of surface treatment of the dielectric layer. Flexible electronics applications are expected to grow substantially over the next 10 years. Given the complexity and challenges of new flexible electronics components, this ‘multivariate’ approach could be adopted more widely by the industry to improve the reliability and performance of such devices.

In this work we propose a phenomenological microscopic approach to deal with pseudoinductive charge-relaxation processes (named also as negative capacitance phenomena) in organic molecules (tris-8-hydroxyquinoline-aluminum) and polymeric [poly(2-metoxy-5-(2′-etil-hexiloxy)-1,4-phenylene vinylene)] light-emitting diodes (OLEDs and PLEDs, respectively). The approach is based mainly on the fact that the recombination rate is higher than the slower carrier transit time to reach the recombination zone. The approach is supported by the fact that in both PLEDs and OLEDs, the strong pseudoinductive relaxation process was mainly observed when electron-hole recombination takes place, suggesting this is a recombination dependent phenomenon. Besides, the negative branch, in the real part of the complex capacitance representation as a function of the frequency, was not observed in PLED homopolar devices.