Organic Electronics

Yousof Mortazavi VLSI Course Presentation December 2004

References
L. Ficke,M. Cahay, The bright future of organic LEDs, IEEE Potentials, Jan. 2004. J. N. Bardsley, International OLED technology roadmap, IEEE J. Selected Topics in Quantum Electronics, Vol. 10, No. 1, Feb. 2004. T. Y. Winarski, Patenting bright ideas; the current state of patented technology in the field of organic light emitting diodes, IEEE Circuits and Devices Magazine, Apr. 2004. T. Shimoda, T. Kawase, All-polymer thin film transistor fabricated by highresolution ink-jet printing, In Proceedings IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference, 2004. S. Forrest, P. Burrows, M. Thompson, The dawn of organic electronics, IEEE Spectrum, Aug. 2000. G. Schmid, et al., Organic electronics: perspectives towards applications, ISSCC 2004. K. Nomoto, et al., A bottom-contact organic-thin-film-transistor for flexible display application, ISSCC 2004. M. G. Kane, Organic electronics: what is it good for?, ISSCC 2004. D. Gundlach, et al., High-mobility, low voltage organic thin film transistors, IEDM 1999.
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Outline Motivations OLED Fundamentals OTFTs Advantages of Organic Electronics Applications OLEDs for Color Displays Challenges

Motivations
Microelectronics vs. Macroelectronics:
Microelectronics: try to make smaller transistors to reduce cost and boost performance Macroelectronics: reduce costs in order build ever larger devices, with acceptable performance

Cost/area

Cost/function

Bulk Si ICs

$10K/ft2

100 cents/ transistor

Thin Film Transistors:

Active layer is silicon (a-Si) deposited on glass . For high mobilities, a-Si can be crystallized (pSi) by laser-pulses at high temperatures. Cant easily use flexible substrates, such as plastics

a-Si TFTs on glass Printed Organic TFTs

[Kane (ISSC04)]

$150/ft2

1 mcents/ transistor

Organic Thin Film Transistors

Organic semiconductors were discovered in 1987. Organic compounds are a natural match for plastic substrates. Use of polymers allows large-areas to be coated and patterned without conventional photolithography (e.g. spin-coaters and ink-jet printers). Organic TFTs may be made large or small (30 nm @ Cornell U.)

$30/ft2

200 cents/ transistor

OLED Fundamentals
In 1987, Tang, et al. published Organic electroluminescent diodes. Currently more than 500 U.S. Patents have been issued on organic electronics. Challenges:
Choice of anode for ohmic contact (for low voltage devices) Diffusion of In, O into HTL HIL interface between ITO and HTL Protection from oxygen and water encapsulation
Cathode

Metal
ETL HTL ITO-Covered Substrate Transparent Anode

OTFT (OFET)
Typical OTFT:
Bottom gate, inverted staggered structure Pentacene (C22H14) active Gate dielectric
SiO2 PMMA PVP

OTFTs operation:
accumulation depletion

Pentacene: Formula: C22H14 Metling Point: 300C Optical Bandgap: 2.8 eV

Mobilities as high as 1 cm2/Vs has been obtained with Ion/Ioff ratio of 108. Very low fabrication temperature (<60C) allows use of cheap plastics. Conventional MOSFET equations are used to model OTFTs however, mobility is voltage dependent.
W/L = 240 m/44 m Tgate= 1700 .

SAM dielectric to reduce gate thickness to 2.5 nm 6 [Schmid et al.]

Advantages of Organic Electronics

Thin, lightweight, flexible displays Low voltage, low power, emissive source High brightness Broad color gamut Wide viewing angle (~180) Good contrast High resolution (<5 m pixel size) Fast switching (1-10 s) Low bill of materials and fabrication cost [Bardsley, 2004]

Dupont Thermal Multilayer Transistor Process

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Applications
Flexible Displays
PM-OLED AM-OLED Wearable Displays

Sensor Arrays
Artificial Skin Gas Sensors

RF ID Tags
Inductors Capacitors

X-ray imaging panels Solid-State Lighting

OLEDs for Color Displays

[Forrest, et al.]
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Challenges
Choice of electrodes Encapsulation Reliability and yield Lifetime Brightness control with feedback Particle migration control with AC driver
A. Giraldo, et al.
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Thank You