Contact effects in polymer field-effect transistors

TL;DR

This paper investigates contact effects in polymer OFETs, revealing how contact resistance depends on mobility, barriers, doping, and surface treatments, with implications for device optimization and understanding charge injection.

Contribution

It introduces a generalized transmission line method for analyzing nonohmic contacts and explores how doping and surface modifications influence contact resistance in polymer transistors.

Findings

Contact resistivity inversely proportional to mobility in ohmic contacts

Doping alters metal-organic band alignment affecting injection

Self-assembled monolayers reduce contact resistance significantly

Abstract

Contact resistances often contribute significantly to the overall device resistance in organic field-effect transistors (OFETs). Understanding charge injection at the metal-organic interface is critical to optimizing OFET device performance. We have performed a series of experiments using bottom-contact poly(3-hexylthiophene) (P3HT) OFETs in the shallow channel limit to examine the injection process. When contacts are ohmic we find that contact resistivity is inversely proportional to carrier mobility, consistent with diffusion-limited injection. However, data from devices with other electrode materials indicate that this simple picture is inadequate to describe contacts with significant barriers. A generalized transmission line method allows the analysis of nonohmic contacts, and we find reasonable agreement with a model for injection that accounts for the hopping nature of conduction in the polymer. Variation of the (unintentional) dopant concentration in the P3HT can significantly alter the injection process via changes in metal-organic band alignment. At very low doping levels, transport suggests the formation of a barrier at the Au/P3HT interface, while Pt/P3HT contacts remain ohmic with comparatively low resistance. We recently observed that self-assembled monolayers on the metal source/drain electrodes can significantly decrease contact resistance and maintain ohmic conduction under conditions that would result in nonohmic, high resistance contacts to untreated electrodes. Finally, we discuss measurements on extremely short channel devices, in the initial steps toward examining transport through individual polymer chains.