Printed Organic Inverter Circuits with Ultralow Operating Voltages

Low-voltage circuit operation is one of the primary requirements for the practical use of printed electronic devices employing organic thin-film transistors, in particular, the driving of devices with power supplied by energy harvesting using organic solar cells or biofuel cells, which require low-voltage operation, typically below 1 V. This study reports on printed organic inverter circuits that operate at 0.3 V with negligible hysteresis, a gain of greater than 10, and rail-to-rail input and output operation, by utilizing a blend of 2,7-dihexyl-dithieno[2,3-d:2',3'-d']benzo[1,2-b:4,5-b']dithiophene and polystyrene. The ultralow voltage operation of these circuits can be attributed to its finely tunable turn-on voltage, low trap density, ohmic contacts, and minimal channel length modulation coefficients. Moreover, these organic inverter circuit arrays exhibit high uniformity with an average switching voltage of 0.32 +/- 0.03 V. As a result, printed organic devices with ultralow operating voltages can be realized with exceptional reproducibility, helping to further the potential of printed electronic applications based on ultralow power organic devices in the future Internet of Things (IoT) ecosystem.