Effect of annealing on the mobility and morphology of thermally activated pentacene thin film transistors

Pentacene thin film transistors (TFTs) were fabricated by the organic molecular beam deposition method. The TFTs were characterized in order to study the effect of thermal annealing on the morphology and carrier mobility of the transistors. For all the TFT samples the mobility exhibited an Arrhenius relationship with temperature, indicating a thermally activated transport that could be explained by the carrier trap and thermal release transport mechanism. Therefore, in order to investigate the annealing effect, we tested the data for a significant period of time after annealing until the temperature recovered to room temperature, so that the thermal activation effect was screened and possible effects of thermal expansion and stress were also ruled out. As a result, we found that only with a temperature below a critical temperature of approximately 45°C could annealing improve the mobility, while annealing with T>50°C would decrease the mobility compared to the value before annealing. Atomic force microsco...