Direct Electrohydrodynamic Patterning of High-Performance All Metal Oxide Thin-Film Electronics

You Liang; Jason Yong; Yang Yu; Ampalavanapillai Nirmalathas; Kumaravelu Ganesan; Robin Evans; Babak Nasr; Efstratios Skafidas

doi:10.1021/acsnano.9b05715

Direct Electrohydrodynamic Patterning of High-Performance All Metal Oxide Thin-Film Electronics

ACS Nano. 2019 Dec 24;13(12):13957-13964. doi: 10.1021/acsnano.9b05715. Epub 2019 Dec 9.

Authors

You Liang^{1

2}, Jason Yong^{1

2}, Yang Yu^{1

2}, Ampalavanapillai Nirmalathas¹, Kumaravelu Ganesan³, Robin Evans¹, Babak Nasr^{1

2}, Efstratios Skafidas^{1

2}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering , University of Melbourne , Melbourne , Victoria 3010 , Australia.
² Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Integrative Brain Function , The University of Melbourne , Melbourne , Victoria 3010 , Australia.
³ School of Physics , University of Melbourne , Melbourne , Victoria 3010 , Australia.

PMID: 31793762
DOI: 10.1021/acsnano.9b05715

Abstract

In this paper, we propose a scalable approach toward all-printed high-performance metal oxide thin-film transistors (TFTs), using a high-resolution electrohydrodynamic (EHD) printing process. Direct EHD micropatterning of metal oxide TFTs is based on diverse precursor solutions to form semiconducting materials (In₂O₃, In-Ga-ZnO (IGZO)), conductive metal oxide (Sn-doped In₂O₃ (ITO)), as well as aluminum oxide (Al₂O₃) gate dielectric at low temperatures. The fully printed TFT devices exhibit excellent electron transport characteristics (average electron mobilities of up to 117 cm² V^-1 s^-1), negligible hysteresis, excellent uniformity, and stable operation at low-operating voltage. Furthermore, integrated logic gates such as NOT and NAND have been printed and demonstrated. All-printed logic with individual gating and symmetric input/output behavior, which is crucial for large-scale integration, is also demonstrated. The devices and fabrication process described in this paper enable high-performance and high-reliability transparent electronics.

Keywords: direct writing; electrohydrodynamic printing; metal oxide precursor; thin-film transistor; transparent electronics; vacuum-free process.