Below-one-volt organic thin-film transistors with large on/off current ratios

In many of the applications envisioned for organic thin-film transistors (TFTs), the electrical power will be supplied by small batteries or energy harvesters, which implies that it will be beneficial if the TFTs can be operated with voltages of 1 V or even below 1 V. At the same time, the TFTs should have large on/off current ratios, especially for applications in digital circuits and active matrices. Here we demonstrate p-channel and n-channel organic TFTs fabricated on a flexible plastic substrate that have a turn-on voltage of exactly 0 V, a subthreshold slope of 100 mV/decade, and an on/off current ratio of 2 × 105 when operated with gate-source voltages between 0 and 0.7 V. Complementary inverters fabricated using these TFTs have a small-signal gain of 90 and a minimum noise margin of 79% at a supply voltage of 0.7 V. Complementary ring oscillators can be operated with supply voltages as small as 0.4 V.