The effect of solvent additives on the performance of 6,13-bis(triisopropylsilylethynyl) pentacene (TIPS-pentacene) field effect transistors (FETs) was investigated. Hole mobilities increased from 0.10 cm² V⁻¹ s⁻¹ for pristine devices to 0.73 or 0.71 cm² V⁻¹ s⁻¹, when TIPS-pentacene FETs were processed with diphenyl ether (DPE) or chloronaphthalene (CN), respectively. In order to examine the impact of additives on the surface morphology, molecular ordering and crystallinity of TIPS-pentacene, scanning electron microscopy (SEM), X-ray diffraction (XRD) and optical microscopy measurements were carried out. Appropriate amounts of additives were found to induce the formation of well-ordered crystalline domains in TIPS-pentacene films, resulting in enhanced hole transport as well as consistent device performance. Additionally, reduced contact resistances were observed in devices processed with additives compared to neat TIPS-pentacene FET devices. Our findings indicate that the use of solvent additives constitutes a new and effective methodology for the fabrication of OFETs with improved performance.

An active-mode organic light-emitting diode (AMOLED) display on a fabric substrate is expected to be a prominent textile display for e-textile applications. However, the large surface roughness of the fabric substrate limits the aperture ratio—the area ratio of the organic light-emitting diode (OLED) to the total pixel area. In this study, the aperture ratio of the AMOLED panel fabricated on the polyethylene terephthalate fabric substrate was enhanced by applying a stacked-pixel structure, in which the OLED was deposited above the organic thin-film transistor (OTFT) pixel circuit layer. The stacked pixels were achieved using the following three key technologies. First, the planarization process of the fabric substrate was performed by sequentially depositing a polyurethane and photo-acryl layer, improving the surface roughness from 10 μm to 0.3 μm. Second, a protection layer consisting of three polymer layers, a water-soluble poly-vinyl alcohol, dichromated-polyvinylalcohol (PVA), and photo acryl, formed by a spin-coating processes was inserted between the OTFT circuit and the OLED layer. Third, a high mobility of 0.98 cm²/V∙s was achieved at the panel scale by using hybrid carbon nano-tube (CNT)/Au (5 nm) electrodes for the S/D contacts and the photo-acryl (PA) for the gate dielectric, enabling the supply of a sufficiently large current (40 μA @ V_GS = −10 V) to the OLED. The aperture ratio of the AMOLED panel using the stacked-pixel structure was improved to 48%, which was about two times larger than the 19% of the side-by-side pixel, placing the OLED just beside the OTFTs on the same plane.

Printing technologies were applied to fabricate a flexible organic thin-film transistor (OTFT) backplane for electrophoretic displays (EPDs). Various printing processes were adopted to maximize the figures of each layer of OTFT: screen printing combined with reverse offset printing for the gate electrodes and scan bus lines with Ag ink, inkjet for the source/drain electrodes with glycerol-doped Poly (3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene): Poly (styrenesulfonate) (PEDOT:PSS), inkjet for the semiconductor layer with Triisopropylsilylethynyl (TIPS)-pentacene, and screen printing for the pixel electrodes with Ag paste. A mobility of 0.44 cm²/V s was obtained, with an average standard deviation of 20%, from the 36 OTFTs taken from different backplane locations, which indicates high uniformity. An EPD laminated on an OTFT backplane with 190×152 pixels on an 8-in panel was successfully operated by displaying some patterns.

In this paper we fabricated a panel consisting of an array of organic TFTs (OTFT) and organic LEDs (OLED) in order to demonstrate the possible application of OTFTs to flexible active matrix OLED (AMOLED). The panel was composed of 64×64 pixels on 4 inch size PET substrate in which each pixel had one OTFT integrated with one green OLED. The panel successfully demonstrated to display some letters and pictures by emitting green light with luminance of 20 cd/m² at 6 V, which was controlled by the gate voltage of OTFT. In addition we also developed fabrication processes for pentacene TFT with PVP gate on PET substrate. The OTFTs produced the maximum mobility of 1.2 cm²/V•sec and on/off current ratio of 2×106.