Printed silver ohmic contacts for high-mobility organic thin-film transistors

Oleic acid-stabilized silver nanoparticles prepared by a facile synthesis afforded highly conductive elements upon proper annealing. Regioregular polythiophene-based thin-film transistors (OTFTs) using source/drain electrodes prepared from these silver nanoparticles provided excellent field-effect characteristics, despite a significant difference between the work function of silver and the HOMO of polythiophene semiconductor. This was attributable to conductive doping of the semiconductor interface by residual oleic acid or its thermally transformed derivative from the silver electrodes, thus enabling ohmic contact formation. This is in sharp contrast to the OTFTs with silver electrodes fabricated from both vacuum deposition and oleylamine-stabilized silver nanoparticles, which exhibited markedly lower mobility and current on/off ratio, a consequence of energetic mismatch of the electrode/semiconductor pairs.