Organic integrated circuits using room-temperature sintered silver nanoparticles as printed electrodes

Organic integrated circuits based on organic thin-film transistor (TFT) devices are fabricated with solution-based electrodes by using dense inks of silver nanoparticles, which can be sintered at room-temperature. The TFT devices fabricated at a sintering temperature of 30 degrees C exhibit good electrical characteristics. There is a strong relation between the sintering temperature of silver nanoparticle inks and transistor characteristics. A work function of silver electrodes can be controlled by changing the sintering temperature of silver nanoparticle inks, thereby threshold voltage of fabricated TFT devices are shifted accordingly. Fabricated pseudo-CMOS inverter circuits are successfully operated at low voltage with small hysteresis, and large gains are obtained. These results suggest that printed organic TFT devices fabricated with a low-temperature process enable large-area and low-cost integrated circuits by using these techniques in future applications. (C) 2012 Elsevier B. V. All rights reserved.