We report on the electrical in-situ characterisation of organic thin film transistors under high vacuum conditions. Model devices in a bottom-gate/bottom-contact (coplanar) configuration are electrically characterised in-situ, monolayer by monolayer (ML), while the organic semiconductor (OSC) is evaporated by organic molecular beam epitaxy (OMBE). Thermal SiO2 with an optional polymer interface stabilisation layer serves as the gate dielectric and pentacene is chosen as the organic semiconductor. The evolution of transistor parameters is studied on a bi-layer dielectric of a 150 nm of SiO2 and 20 nm of poly((±)endo,exo-bicyclo[2.2.1]hept-5-ene-2,3-dicarboxylic acid, diphenylester) (PNDPE) and compared to the behaviour on a pure SiO2 dielectric. The thin layer of PNDPE, which is an intrinsically photo-patternable organic dielectric, shows an excellent stabilisation performance, significantly reducing the calculated interface trap density at the OSC/dielectric interface up to two orders of magnitude, and thus remarkably improving the transistor performance.
Keywords: in-situ characterisation; norbornene; organic thin-film transistors; pentacene; polymer dielectric.