Transcript
As reported recently in the journal Nature Communications, researchers from Stanford and the University of Nebraska-Lincoln have developed the world's fastest thin-film organic transistors.
This new technology could become the foundation for cheap, high-performance displays. In fact, it has the potential to achieve the performance needed for high-resolution television screens and similar electronic devices.
For years, engineers the world over have been trying to use inexpensive, carbon-rich molecules and plastics to create organic semiconductors capable of performing electronic operations at something approaching the blistering speed of costlier technologies based on silicon.
The term "organic" was originally confined to compounds produced by living organisms, but now it has been extended to include synthetic substances based on carbon, including plastics.
These new thin-film organic transistors operate more than five times faster than previous examples of this technology. They achieved their speed boost by altering the basic process for making thin-film organic transistors.
Typically, researchers drop a special solution, containing carbon-rich molecules and a complementary plastic, onto a spinning platter, which distributes a thin coating of the materials over the platter.
For the new process, the team made two important changes to this basic process:
- First, they spun the platter faster.
- Second, they only coated a tiny portion of the spinning surface, equivalent to the size of a postage stamp.
These innovations have the effect of depositing a denser concentration of the organic molecules into a more regular alignment. As a result, electrical charges travel through the transistor much faster.
The researchers call this improved method "off-center spin coating." The process remains experimental, and the engineers cannot yet precisely control the alignment of organic materials in their transistors or achieve uniform carrier mobility.
Even at this stage, off-center spin coating produces transistors with a range of speeds comparable to the performance of the poly-silicon materials used in today's high-end electronics.
Further improvements to this experimental process could lead to the development of inexpensive, high-performance electronics built on transparent substrates, such as glass and plastics.
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