Breakthrough Reported in Transconductance in Ink-jet Printing

University of Cambridge researchers report that they have successfully achieved a transconductance of 0.76 S/m for organic thin-film transistors with 4 V-operation. The team writes: “This is the highest transconductance reported for organic TFTs fabricated using printing, to the best of our knowledge.”

Thanks to ultra-low volume (subfemtoliter) inkjet nozzles, small transistors (channel length ~ 1 μm) were fabricated using electrodes printed from nanoparticle metal inks.

The small dimensions allowed the authors to demonstrate low-power and high-speed operation (theoretically up to a few MHz) of organic transistors, a requirement for useful circuits. 



The researchers go on to show that organic and printed electronics are not limited to large and slow devices, but can be extended to fast and miniaturized circuits while remaining compatible with low-cost fabrication on cheap flexible substrates.

The paper should be availabe at Cambridge Journals online (down for maintenance now)

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