Inkjet printed circuits with two-dimensional semiconductor inks for high-performance electronics

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates the creation of air-stable, high-performance inkjet-printed complementary logic circuits using two-dimensional semiconductor inks, advancing low-cost printed digital electronics with high switching speeds and logic functionality.

Contribution

It introduces high-quality, air-stable MoS2 and IDT-BT inks for inkjet printing of complementary FETs and integrates them into functional logic inverters, a novel step in printed electronics.

Findings

Achieved low-voltage operation (<5V) of printed FETs.

Demonstrated inkjet-printed inverters with voltage gain up to 4.

Estimated switching time of approximately 3.3 microseconds.

Abstract

Air-stable semiconducting inks suitable for complementary logic are key to create low-power printed integrated circuits (ICs). High-performance printable electronic inks with two-dimensional materials have the potential to enable the next generation of high performance, low-cost printed digital electronics. Here we demonstrate air-stable, low voltage (< 5 V) operation of inkjet-printed n-type molybdenum disulfide (MoS2) and p-type indacenodithiophene-co-benzothiadiazole (IDT-BT) field-effect transistors (FETs), estimating a switching time of {\tau} ~ 3.3 {\mu}s for the MoS2 FETs. We achieve this by engineering high-quality MoS2 and air-stable IDT-BT inks suitable for inkjet-printing complementary pairs of n-type MoS2 and p-type IDT-BT FETs. We then integrate MoS2 and IDT-BT FETs to realise inkjet-printed complementary logic inverters with a voltage gain |Av| ~ 4 when in resistive load configuration and |Av| ~ 1.36 in complementary configuration. These results represent a key enabling step towards ubiquitous long-term stable, low-cost printed digital ICs.