Inkjet printed graphene-based field-effect transistors on flexible substrate

This paper presents the design and fabrication of inkjet printed graphene field-effect transistors (GFETs). The inkjet printed GFET is fabricated on a DuPont Kapton FPC Polyimide film with a thickness of 5 mill and dielectric constant of 3.9 by using a Fujifilm Dimatix DMP-2831 materials deposition system. A layer by layer 3D printing technique is deployed with an initial printing of source and drain by silver nanoparticle ink. Then graphene active layer doped with molybdenum disulfide (MoS₂) monolayer/multilayer dispersion, is printed onto the surface of substrate covering the source and drain electrodes. High capacitance ion gel is adopted as the dielectric material due to the high dielectric constant. Then the dielectric layer is then covered with silver nanoparticle gate electrode. Characterization of GFET has been done at room temperature (25°C) using HP-4145B semiconductor parameter analyzer (Hewlett-Packard). The characterization result shows for a voltage sweep from -2 volts to 2 volts, the drain current changes from 949 nA to 32.3 μA and the GFET achieved an on/off ratio of 38:1, which is a milestone for inkjet printed flexible graphene transistor.