Liquid crystal-like active layer for high-performance organic field-effect transistors

Abstract High carrier mobility and uniform device performance are of crucial importance for organic field-effect transistor (OFET)-based device and integrated circuit applications. However, strategies for achieving high device performance with small variations from batch to batch are still desired. Here, we report a thin liquid crystal-like film of 2,8-difluoro-5,11-bis(triethylsilylethynyl) anthradithiophene (dif-TES-ADT) grown on a N,N ′-ditridecylperylene-3,4,9,10-tetra-carboxylic diimide (PTCDI-C 13 ) template, confirmed by atomic force microscopy and polarized fluorescence microscopy. The liquid crystal-like films with large crystalline domains are further employed as carrier transport channels for OFETs. As a result, we achieved high-performance OFETs with a saturation carrier mobility of 1.62 ± 0.26 cm 2 V −1 s −1 and a small variation of 16% among three batches. This finding provides a new strategy to design materials and device structures to simultaneously achieve high carrier mobility and device uniformity.