One-Step Patterning of Organic Semiconductors on Gold Electrodes via Capillary-Bridge Manipulation

Patterning organic semiconductors directly on Au electrodes possesses the advantages of eliminating metal atomic penetration effect, compatibility with fine lithography processes, and feasibility of work function modification on electrodes, and it is therefore of value in the commercial manufacturability application of optoelectronic devices with low cost, large scale, and high efficiency. Solution processing, is relatively inexpensive and is scalable to large areas. Nonetheless, conventional solution processing approaches have trade-offs among controllable morphology, regular alignment, precise position, and ordered molecular packing arising from the uncontrollable dewetting kinetics. Here, one-step patterning of 1D polymer nanowire arrays directly on Au source-drain electrodes with precise position, controlled orientation, regulated distribution, and tunable width size were realized by employing a capillary-bridge manipulation method to guide the processes of liquid dewetting and nanowire assembly. Organic field-effect transistors (OFETs) with mobility of 10.1 cm² V^-1 s^-1 and on/off current ratio of 1.9 × 10⁴ were fabricated. Moreover, we verified generality of our method by patterning different solution-processable optoelectronic materials, including small molecules, quantum dot (QD) nanoparticles, and metal-halide perovskites, into ordered structures directly on the target substrate. The work provides a novel insight into efficient manufacturing the regular aligned and precisely positioned 1D organic semiconductors directly on the channel region of prefabricated Au electrodes in one step and facilitates their applications in high-performance electronic devices.