Conductive Polymer-Assisted Metal Oxide Hybrid Semiconductors for High-Performance Thin-Film Transistors

Advances in the Use of Conducting Polymers for Healthcare Monitoring

Conducting polymers (CPs) are an innovative class of materials recognized for their high flexibility and biocompatibility, making them an ideal choice for health monitoring applications that require flexibility. They are active in their design. Advances in fabrication technology allow the incorporation of CPs at various levels, by combining diverse CPs monomers with metal particles, 2D materials, carbon nanomaterials, and copolymers through the process of polymerization and mixing. This method produces materials with unique physicochemical properties and is highly customizable. In particular, the development of CPs with expanded surface area and high conductivity has significantly improved the performance of the sensors, providing high sensitivity and flexibility and expanding the range of available options. However, due to the morphological diversity of new materials and thus the variety of characteristics that can be synthesized by combining CPs and other types of functionalities, choosing the right combination for a sensor application is difficult but becomes important. This review focuses on classifying the role of CP and highlights recent advances in sensor design, especially in the field of healthcare monitoring. It also synthesizes the sensing mechanisms and evaluates the performance of CPs on electrochemical surfaces and in the sensor design. Furthermore, the applications that can be revolutionized by CPs will be discussed in detail.

Multimode Operation of Organic-Inorganic Hybrid Thin-Film Transistors Based on Solution-Processed Indium Oxide Films

Solution-processed metal oxide (MO) thin films have been extensively studied for use in thin-film transistors (TFTs) due to their high optical transparency, simplicity of fabrication methods, and high electron mobility. Here, we report, for the first time, the improvement of the electronic properties of solution-processed indium oxide (InO_x) films by the subsequent addition of an organic p-type semiconductor material, here 6,13-bis(triisopropylsilylethynyl)pentacene (TIPS-pentacene), yielding organic-inorganic hybrid TFTs. The addition of TIPS-pentacene not only improves the electron mobility by enhancing the charge carrier percolation pathways but also improves the electronic and temporal stability of the I_DS(V_G) characteristics as well as reduces the number of required spin-coating steps of the InO_x precursor solution. Very interestingly, the introduction of 10 nm TIPS-pentacene films on top of 15 nm InO_x layers allows the fabrication of either enhancement- or depletion-mode devices with only minimal changes to the fabrication process. Specifically, we find that when the TIPS-pentacene layer is added on top of the source/drain electrodes, resulting in devices with embedded source/drain electrodes [embedded electrode TFTs (EETFTs)], the devices exhibit an enhancement-mode behavior with an average mobility (μ) of 6.4 cm² V^-1 s^-1, a source-drain current ratio (I_on/I_off) of around 10⁵, and a near-zero threshold voltage (V_TH). When on the other hand the TIPS-pentacene layer is added before the source-drain electrodes, i.e., in top-contact electrode TFTs (TCETFTs), a very clear depletion mode behavior is observed with an average μ of 6.3 cm² V^-1 s^-1, an I_on/I_off ratio of over 10⁵, and a V_TH of -80.3 V. Furthermore, a logic inverter is fabricated combining the enhancement (EETFTs)- and depletion (TCETFTs)-mode transistors, which shows a potential for the construction of organic-inorganic hybrid electronics and circuits.