Date of Award

Fall 2003

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Micro and Nanoscale Systems

First Advisor

Tianhong Cui

Abstract

The study of organic materials to create field-effect transistors has recently emerged and is gaining much interest. All-polymer electronic devices are currently in their infancy, like semiconductor devices when they first appeared. As a result, current performance of these devices is in no way comparable to the state-of-the-art semiconductor devices. However, all-polymer devices have a few possible appealing advantages. First, all polymer devices have the potential for low-cost fabrication due to their ease of manufacturability, with fewer and simpler processing steps compared with solid-state semiconductor devices. Secondly, polymer devices offer the ability of material flexibility. Lastly, polymer devices may prove to be an excellent contender for the interconnection technology between the electronic and optical domains.

In this work, polymer microelectronics devices and a follower circuit have been fabricated and electrically characterized by the combination of UV lithography, ink-jet printing, and electrostatic layer-by-layer (LbL) self-assembly (SA) techniques.

Chapter one introduces polymer microelectronics history, properties of conducting polymers, and polymer materials used in this work. Chapter two mainly focuses on an all-polymer capacitor fabricated by lithography techniques. Metal-Oxide-Semiconductor (MOS) structure was adopted by using polypyrrole (PPy), Poly (3, 4-ethylenedioxythiophene) poly (styrene sulfonate) (PEDT/PSS), and Poly-4(4-vinylphenol) (PVP) as a semiconductor, a gate layer, and an insulator, respectively. In chapter three, we introduce an MOS capacitor developed by LbL ESA combined with modified lift-off methods. It is demonstrated that LbL ESA allows one to obtain some of the thin films for a semiconductor device with a dramatically lower temperature, lower cost, and shorter processing time. In chapter four, a polymer p-channel junction field-effect transistor (JFET), by using PEDT/PSS as the channel and Poly [2-methoxy-5-(2-ethylhexyloxy)-1, 4-(1-cyanovinyl-enephenylene)] (CNPPV) as the gate layer, is introduced and electrically characterized. Conventional UV lithography techniques were the main fabrication methods, and the experimental results were analyzed by using a theoretical equation for inorganic semiconductors. It appears that no polymer JFETs have been reported previously. Finally, an AC follower circuit with a polymer JFET as the active component was built by the combination of lithography and ink jet printing techniques and is highlighted in chapter five. The circuit displays the expected characteristics.

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