High-Performance Fiber-Shaped Vertical Organic Electrochemical Transistors Patterned by Surface Photolithography

Converging the fibrous flexibility and resilience with the advantageous electrical properties of organic electrochemical transistors (OECTs), fiber-shaped OECTs possess great potential in wearable electronics. However, limited by current highly recognized fabrication techniques for film devices, micrometer-scale patterning capability of electrodes and semiconductor channels on the curved surface of fibers is still challenging. In addition, the well-defined short channel length of fiber-shaped OECTs is highly desired to narrow the performance gap with planar OECT devices. In this study, the fabrication of photopatterned vertical OECT devices on fiber surfaces (fiber-shaped vOECTs) is achieved. Moreover, the first n-type fiber-shaped vOECTs and high-performance p-type fiber-shaped vOECTs are realized. The fiber-shaped vOECT devices work in enhancement mode, with remarkable maximum transconductance (p-type: 41.10 mS, n-type: 2.25 mS) and current on/off ratio (∼104), together with good cycling stability (maintaining over 90% of performance beyond 500 cycles). Furthermore, by using knitting and weaving fabric textures, complementary inverter, NAND and NOR logic gates integrated through fiber-shaped vOECTs are derived and showcased. This study demonstrates the potential of this approach as a universal platform for fabricating high-performance semiconductor devices.