Transparent electronics based on transfer printed aligned carbon nanotubes on rigid and flexible substrates.

We report high-performance fully transparent thin-film transistors (TTFTs) on both rigid and flexible substrates with transfer printed aligned nanotubes as the active channel and indium-tin oxide as the source, drain, and gate electrodes. Such transistors have been fabricated through low-temperature processing, which allowed device fabrication even on flexible substrates. Transparent transistors with high effective mobilities (approximately 1300 cm(2) V(-1) s(-1)) were first demonstrated on glass substrates via engineering of the source and drain contacts, and high on/off ratio (3 x 10(4)) was achieved using electrical breakdown. In addition, flexible TTFTs with good transparency were also fabricated and successfully operated under bending up to 120 degrees . All of the devices showed good transparency (approximately 80% on average). The transparent transistors were further utilized to construct a fully transparent and flexible logic inverter on a plastic substrate and also used to control commercial GaN light-emitting diodes (LEDs) with light intensity modulation of 10(3). Our results suggest that aligned nanotubes have great potential to work as building blocks for future transparent electronics.

[1]  Jun Liu,et al.  Fabrication of fully transparent nanowire transistors for transparent and flexible electronics. , 2007, Nature nanotechnology.

[2]  G. Gelinck,et al.  Flexible active-matrix displays and shift registers based on solution-processed organic transistors , 2004, Nature materials.

[3]  E. Fortunato,et al.  Fully Transparent ZnO Thin‐Film Transistor Produced at Room Temperature , 2005 .

[4]  T. Riedl,et al.  Towards See‐Through Displays: Fully Transparent Thin‐Film Transistors Driving Transparent Organic Light‐Emitting Diodes , 2006 .

[5]  V. R. Raju,et al.  Paper-like electronic displays: Large-area rubber-stamped plastic sheets of electronics and microencapsulated electrophoretic inks , 2001, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

[6]  Stephen R. Forrest,et al.  The path to ubiquitous and low-cost organic electronic appliances on plastic , 2004, Nature.

[7]  T. Someya,et al.  Conformable, flexible, large-area networks of pressure and thermal sensors with organic transistor active matrixes. , 2005, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

[8]  S. Tans,et al.  Room-temperature transistor based on a single carbon nanotube , 1998, Nature.

[9]  Herbert Shea,et al.  Single- and multi-wall carbon nanotube field-effect transistors , 1998 .

[10]  H. Ohta,et al.  Room-temperature fabrication of transparent flexible thin-film transistors using amorphous oxide semiconductors , 2004, Nature.

[11]  A. Facchetti,et al.  High-performance transparent inorganic–organic hybrid thin-film n-type transistors , 2006, Nature materials.

[12]  W. Sachtler,et al.  The work function of gold , 1966 .

[13]  H. Ohta,et al.  Thin-Film Transistor Fabricated in Single-Crystalline Transparent Oxide Semiconductor , 2003, Science.

[14]  G. Grüner,et al.  Transparent and flexible carbon nanotube transistors. , 2005, Nano letters.

[15]  John A. Rogers,et al.  Highly Bendable, Transparent Thin‐Film Transistors That Use Carbon‐Nanotube‐Based Conductors and Semiconductors with Elastomeric Dielectrics , 2006 .

[16]  Kazuhito Tsukagoshi,et al.  High-performance transparent flexible transistors using carbon nanotube films , 2006 .

[17]  Randy Hoffman,et al.  Transparent ring oscillator based on indium gallium oxide thin-film transistors , 2006 .

[18]  Chongwu Zhou,et al.  Template-free directional growth of single-walled carbon nanotubes on a- and r-plane sapphire. , 2005, Journal of the American Chemical Society.

[19]  J. Rogers,et al.  High-performance electronics using dense, perfectly aligned arrays of single-walled carbon nanotubes. , 2007, Nature nanotechnology.

[20]  T. Chou,et al.  Advances in the science and technology of carbon nanotubes and their composites: a review , 2001 .

[21]  M. Shiraishi,et al.  Work function of carbon nanotubes , 2001 .

[22]  Wei Lu,et al.  Fully transparent thin-film transistor devices based on SnO2 nanowires. , 2007, Nano letters.

[23]  S. So,et al.  Angular-dependent photoemission studies of indium tin oxide surfaces , 2001 .

[24]  M. Fuhrer,et al.  Extraordinary Mobility in Semiconducting Carbon Nanotubes , 2004 .

[25]  Ananth Dodabalapur,et al.  Organic and polymer transistors for electronics , 2006 .

[26]  Shoushan Fan,et al.  Measuring the work function of carbon nanotubes with thermionic method. , 2008, Nano letters.

[27]  Paul L. McEuen,et al.  High Performance Electrolyte Gated Carbon Nanotube Transistors , 2002 .

[28]  Shuichi Nonomura,et al.  Optical and electrical properties of amorphous and microcrystalline GaN films and their application to transparent TFT , 1997 .

[29]  P. Anderson.  Work Function of Gold , 1959 .

[30]  C. Dimitrakopoulos,et al.  Organic Thin Film Transistors for Large Area Electronics , 2002 .

[31]  A. Yassar,et al.  All-Polymer Field-Effect Transistor Realized by Printing Techniques , 1994, Science.