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Nikolay L. Vaklev, Robert Müller, Beinn V. O. Muir, David T. James, Roger Pretot, Paul van der Schaaf, Jan Genoe, Ji-Seon Kim, Joachim H. G. Steinke, and Alasdair J. Campbell* One of the key advantages of organic field-effect transistors (OFETs) is their ability to form flexible, conformable and lightweight electronic devices, e.g. radio frequency identification (RFID) tags,[1] microprocessors[2] and flexible displays.[3] These require fabrication over large-areas on flexible plastic substrates, the poor dimensional stability of such substrates creating the additional demand of low-temperature processing (95.0%) was purchased from Sigma-Aldrich (UK) and purified by gradient sublimation. Device Fabrication: Commercially available poly carbonate (PC) plastic substrate coated with transparent conducting oxide (TCO, sheet resistance 30 Ω sq−1) was used as a substrate. The gate electrode of TCO was patterned by conventional photolithography and etching in hydrochloric acid (6 mol L−1). An experimental dielectric formulation supplied by BASF was either gravure printed or spin-cast. Photoinitiator Irgacure 369 from BASF was dissolved in the dielectric formulation at 10 mg mL−1 prior to film deposition. The dielectric film was photopatterned with a photo mask and Karl Süss MJB3 mask aligner; the UV dose was 1.44 J cm−2 at 365 nm. Afterwards, the dielectric was developed and further cured with UV for 10 min in Lightning Enterprises ELC-500 chamber under nitrogen. Gold source and drain electrodes were made of thermally evaporated gold with 30–50 nm thickness. The gold layer was photopatterned on top of the dielectric via a standard lift-off process using the same mask aligner. This step involved positive photoresist Microposit S1813 G2 (Chestech Ltd, UK); the developer was MF-26 A (Chestech Ltd, UK) and the lift-off solvent was acetone at 40 °C. The channel lengths were in the range 3–50 µm; the channel width was in the range 0.25–10 mm. The gold contacts were perfluorinated with PFBT using a 10 mmol L−1 solution in ethanol. PαMS was spin-cast from toluene solution with 3 and 10 mg mL−1 concentration to give 6 and 10 nm thick films, respectively; spin speed and acceleration were 4000 rpm and 10,000 rpm min−1 in both cases. The water contact angles on the bare dielectric and PαMS were recorded with Krüss DSA 100 under ambient conditions. TIPSpentacene (10 mg mL−1) was dissolved in anisole (spin-casting) and toluene (zone-casting). Solutions were filtered through 0.45 µm PTFE filter. The semiconductor was spin-cast at 2000 rpm for 60 s with 10,000 rpm min−1 acceleration in air. Pentacene was evaporated onto the substrates in an ultrahigh vacuum chamber (10–8 Torr) at 0.25 Å s−1, while the substrate was kept at 68 °C. Capacitor Structures: The dielectric films are characterised in semiconductor–insulator–metal (SIM) capacitor structures 0.04–2 mm2 in area. The bottom electrode is TCO. The top electrode is 30–50 nm thick thermally-evaporated gold. The dielectric capacitance was measured with Schlumberger IS 1260 impedance analyser in the range 10–106 Hz and 0.1 V AC-modulation. The capacitors were connected to a 433 kΩ resistor in parallel for these measurements. The data was modelled as an equivalent circuit with capacitor and resistor in parallel and a resistor in series connected to them. The latter accounts for the non-ideality of the connecting lines. Each capacitor was measured at 0 and 1 V DC-bias. Gravure Printing: Norbert Schläfli Maschinen Labratester I gravure printer was used to print the dielectric at 44 m min−1 web speed. The nip pressure was ca. 100 N cm−2 and we used a metal doctor blade. The films were printed with stylus engraved cliché with print screen density of 110 line cm−1, which affords approximately 10 nL mm−2 of ink loading. Slower web speeds and larger print screen densities were observed to result in film non-uniformity. Zone-casting of TIPS-Pentacene. Aligned, large-area films were deposited using zone-casting.[26] Solutions were loaded into a syringe chamber heated at 60 °C and injected at a flow rate of 18 µL s−1 onto the horizontal plastic substrates heated at 70 °C. The substrates were translated at a controlled speed of 0.5 mm s−1 during solution injection to form aligned crystalline films. The set-up was in a fume hood in air. For information on zone-casting optimisation see Supporting Information (Figure S11). Characterisation of OFETs: Transistor transfer characteristics were recorded with Agilent 4156C SPA in continuous ramp mode. All OFETs with TIPS-pentacene were measured in ambient air whereas the pentacene devices were tested in nitrogen-filled glove box — water and oxygen content ≤0.1 ppm. The on/off ratio values for OFETs were limited by the noise level of the electrical set-up (0.1–1 nA), because the measurements were unshielded and with coaxial cabling.

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the solvent of the OSC formulation redissolves the PαMS layer during spin-casting of TIPS-pentacene, but a certain fraction of the PαMS polymer was redeposited. To deposit a layer of TIPS-pentacene with higher crystallinity we then used solution-based zone-casting deposition and achieved state-of-the-art performance. Zone-casting is a large area, roll-to-roll compatible method in which a crystalline material is deposited from melt or solution. In this case, a heated TIPS-pentacene solution was deposited using a previously described recipe[26] onto heated substrates with a PαMS layer. Zone-casting TIPS-pentacene resulted in crystal growth in the casting direction and lead to macroscopically-sized crystalline domains (Figure 3h). The PαMS layer was dissolved by the hot OSC solution and incorporated into the crystal growth front. The polymer binder can be clearly seen on the AFM micrograph of the zone-cast film as globular structures between or on top the semiconducting crystals (Figure 3e). An average saturation mobility value of 0.3 ± 0.1 cm2 V−1 s−1 and an average onset voltage of about 0.8 V were achieved. We note that all PαMS coated dielectric devices with pentacene and TIPS-pentacene have a similar onset and subthreshold swing voltages. The dielectric and PαMS layer are therefore good at minimizing the formation of interfacial traps irrespective of the semiconductor deposition method. OFETs with spin-cast and gravure printed dielectric show equal electrical performance (Figure S5 and 6). The charge-carrier mobility, onset voltage, SSV and on/off values for the spincast and gravure printed dielectric lie within ±1 standard deviation of each other (Figure 2c) for pentacene and TIPS-pentacene devices with PαMS. The physical morphology of the OSCs is also the same regardless of the dielectric deposition (Figure S9 and 10). Therefore, the triacrylate based dielectric can be processed using large-area compatible coating techniques such as gravure to give equally high performance devices as when it is spin-cast. In conclusion, we have demonstrated that it is possible to fabricate state-of-the-art flexible small molecule BG BC OFETs on plastic foil using a large-area scalable platform. A flexible and photopatternable polymer dielectric has been demonstrated which can be gravure printed and spin-cast, gives low leakage current, high breakdown voltage, and low surface roughness. It is also resistant to subsequent processing with photolithographic chemicals and solvents. Small molecule OFETs could be fabricated with low onset voltage and sub-threshold slope, and high mobility and on/off ratio by modifying the wetting properties of the dielectric surface with a nanoscale thick layer of PαMS. This system is compatible with multiple small molecule deposition methods. Evaporated pentacene OFETs achieved an average mobility of 0.6 cm2 V−1 s−1, which is state-of-the-art for this device geometry for flexible transistors on plastic. We also demonstrated that zone-casting can be used to fabricate small molecule OFETs on plastic with a polymer dielectric, TIPS-pentacene achieving an average mobility of 0.3 cm2 V−1 s−1, which is state-of-the-art for this device geometry for flexible devices.

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Atomic force microscopy (AFM) images were recorded using a Bruker Multimode 8 in Tapping or ScanAssyst mode. Optical microscopy images were recorded using Olympus BX51 with cross-polariser. Film thicknesses were measured with Tencor Instruments AlphaStep 200.

Supporting Information Supporting Information is available from the Wiley Online Library or from the author.

Acknowledgments The authors would like to thank Steve Smout (imec) for pentacene evaporation. The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Community's Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007–2013) under grant agreement n°247978. Received: November 25, 2013 Revised: December 18, 2013 Published online:

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High-Performance Flexible Bottom-Gate Organic Field-Effect Transistors with Gravure Printed Thin Organic Dielectric.

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