Polymer Transistor Performance Monitored by Terahertz Spectroscopy

Research on polymer-based transistors is leading to the development of flexible, printable circuitry, which were extremely cost effective to manufacture. However, the long-term performance of state-of-the-art polymer field effect transistors (pFETs) is limited by device degradation. We show that terahertz spectroscopy is an ideal tool to probe polymer device performance. Specifically we have monitored charge carrier trapping at the polymer-insulator boundary of a pFET. From these results we show that device degradation is primarily caused by a trapping of holes in the channel of the pFET, rather than by a change in hole mobility.