We report high-performance fully transparent thin-film transistors (TTFTs) on both rigid and flexible substrates with transfer printed aligned nanotubes as the active channel and indium-tin oxide as the source, drain, and gate electrodes. Such transistors have been fabricated through low-temperature processing, which allowed device fabrication even on flexible substrates.
Transparent transistors with high effective mobilities (~1300 cm2 V-1 s-1) were first demonstrated on glass substrates via engineering of the source and drain contacts, and high on/off ratio (3 x 10 power 4) was achieved using electrical breakdown. In addition, flexible TTFTs with good transparency were also fabricated and successfully operated under bending up to 120°.
All of the devices showed good transparency (~80% on average). The transparent transistors were further utilized to construct a fully transparent and flexible logic inverter on a plastic substrate and also used to control commercial GaN light-emitting diodes (LEDs) with light intensity modulation of 10 power 3). Our results suggest that aligned nanotubes have great potential to work as building blocks for future transparent electronics.
Source: University of Southern California
AuthorS: Fumiaki N. Ishikawa, Hsiao-kang Chang, Koungmin Ryu, Po-chiang Chen, Alexander Badmaev, Lewis Gomez De Arco, Guozhen Shen, and Chongwu Zhou