Low-Voltage Organic Field-Effect Transistors: Challenges, Progress, and Prospects

The quest for organic field-effect transistors (OFETs) with low operating voltage has become highly compelling in many application areas, such as medical sensors, radio frequency identification (RFID), wearable and stretchable technologies, etc. To this end, considerable efforts have been devoted to decreasing the operation voltage of OFETs while retaining high performance over the last few decades. This Review focuses on the recent progress in the field of low-voltage OFETs. The critical factors to realize low-voltage OFETs are analyzed systematically through establishing the relationships between the operation voltage and subthreshold swing. Further on the strategic approaches for lowering the operation voltage, increasing gate dielectric capacitance, reducing the trap density within the semiconductor layer or at device interfaces, and using the negative capacitor effect, are summarized and discussed. We conclude with an overview of these critical methods and the key challenges to enable the laboratory-to-production transition.