Logic-gate devices based on printed polymer semiconducting nanostripes

Tuning Electronic and Functional Properties in Defected MoS2 Films by Surface Patterning of Sulphur Atomic Vacancies

Defects are inherent in transition metal dichalcogenides and significantly affect their chemical and physical properties. In this study, surface defect electrochemical nanopatterning is proposed as a promising method to tune in a controlled manner the electronic and functional properties of defective MoS₂ thin films. Using parallel electrochemical nanolithography, MoS₂ thin films are patterned, creating sulphur vacancy-rich active zones alternated with defect-free regions over a centimetre scale area, with sub-micrometre spatial resolution. The patterned films display tailored optical and electronic properties due to the formation of sulphur vacancy-rich areas. Moreover, the effectiveness of defect nanopatterning in tuning functional properties is demonstrated by studying the electrocatalytic activity for the hydrogen evolution reaction.

Enhancing zT in Organic Thermoelectric Materials through Nanoscale Local Control Crystallization

Organic thermoelectric materials are promising for wearable heating and cooling devices, as well as near-room-temperature energy generation, due to their nontoxicity, abundance, low cost, and flexibility. However, their primary challenge preventing widespread use is their reduced figure of merit (zT) caused by low electrical conductivity. This study presents a method to enhance the thermoelectric performance of solution-processable organic materials through confined crystallization using the lithographically controlled wetting (LCW) technique. Using PEDOT as a benchmark, we demonstrate that controlled crystallization at the nanoscale improves electrical conductivity by optimizing chain packing and grain morphology. Structural characterizations reveal the formation of a highly compact PEDOT arrangement, achieved through a combination of confined crystallization and DMSO post-treatment, leading to a 4-fold increase in the power factor compared to spin-coated films. This approach also reduces the thermal conductivity dependence on electrical conductivity, improving the zT by up to 260%. The LCW technique, compatible with large-area and flexible substrates, offers a simple, green, and low-cost method to boost the performance of organic thermoelectrics, advancing the potential for sustainable energy solutions and advanced organic electronic devices.

Opportunity of Patterning in Chemistry

Patterning offers an efficient way to quantitatively enhance and enlarge material properties and functionalities, offering unprecedented opportunities for innovation in various scientific domains. By precisely controlling the spatial arrangement of materials at the micro- and nanoscale, patterning enables the exploitation of inherent material properties in novel ways. In addition, it generates new properties, leading to the development of advanced devices and applications. This article highlights the significant contributions of spatially controlled patterning in chemistry, particularly in generating new functional properties and devices, discussing some representative articles. Examples include the use of unconventional patterning techniques for surface functionalization, as well as the application of spatial confinement in improving material properties and controlling crystallization processes. Furthermore, the discussion extends to creating new devices, such as optical storage media and sensors, through spatial organization of materials.

Ambipolar blend-based organic electrochemical transistors and inverters

CMOS-like circuits in bioelectronics translate biological to electronic signals using organic electrochemical transistors (OECTs) based on organic mixed ionic-electronic conductors (OMIECs). Ambipolar OECTs can reduce the complexity of circuit fabrication, and in bioelectronics have the major advantage of detecting both cations and anions in one device, which further expands the prospects for diagnosis and sensing. Ambipolar OMIECs however, are scarce, limited by intricate materials design and complex synthesis. Here we demonstrate that judicious selection of p- and n-type materials for blend-based OMIECs offers a simple and tunable approach for the fabrication of ambipolar OECTs and corresponding circuits. These OECTs show high transconductance and excellent stability over multiple alternating polarity cycles, with ON/OFF ratios exceeding 10³ and high gains in corresponding inverters. This work presents a simple and versatile new paradigm for the fabrication of ambipolar OMIECs and circuits with little constraints on materials design and synthesis and numerous possibilities for tunability and optimization towards higher performing bioelectronic applications.

Ambipolar organic electrochemical transistors simplify bioelectronics circuitry but are challenging due to complicated material design and synthesis. Here, the authors demonstrate that p- and n-type blends offer a simple and tuneable approach for the fabrication of ambipolar devices and circuits.

Versatile Triple-Output Molecular Logic Gate for Cysteine and Silver (I) in Foods and the Environment Based on I-Motif DNA Modulation

DNA-based molecular logic gates have been developed rapidly but most of them have a single output mode. This study is to develop a triple-output label-free fluorescent DNA-based multifunctional molecular logic gate with berberine as a fluorescent signal and a Ag⁺-aptamer as a recognition matrix. The Ag⁺-aptamer has been identified to switch from a random coil to an i-motif structure of C-Ag⁺-C from a Ag⁺-induced responsive conformational change. As a fluorescent probe, berberine is ultrasensitive to the changes of microenvironments, and the binding to i-motif DNA's more rigid structure causes a significant increase in fluorescence, anisotropy, and lifetime. The addition of cysteine to the berberine/C-Ag⁺-C system disintegrates the i-motif DNA structure because of the strong coordination between Ag⁺ and cysteine, and then the triple-output signals are almost retrieved. Given this, a highly sensitive triple-output molecular logic gate for the analyses of Ag⁺ and cysteine is constructed with high specificity. Moreover, this simple and cost-effective molecular logic gate has been applied for the detection of cysteine and Ag⁺ in various real environmental samples including river water, PM_2.5, soil, and food samples with satisfactory recoveries from 89.83 to 106.04%.

Organic Field-Effect Transistor Fabricated on Internal Shrinking Substrate

In the development of flexible organic field-effect transistors (OFET), downsizing and reduction of the operating voltage are essential for achieving a high current density with a low operating power. Although the bias voltage of the OFETs can be reduced by a high-k dielectric, achieving a threshold voltage close to zero remains a challenge. Moreover, the scaling down of OFETs demands the use of photolithography, and may lead to compatibility issues in organic semiconductors. Herein, a new strategy based on the ductile properties of organic semiconductors is developed to control the threshold voltage at close to zero while concurrently downsizing the OFETs. The OFETs are fabricated on prestressed polystyrene shrink film substrates at room temperature, then thermal energy (160 °C) is used to release the strain. The OFETs conformally attached to the wrinkled structure are shown to locally amplify the electric field. After shrinking, the horizontal device area is reduced by 75%, and the threshold voltage is decreased from -1.44 to -0.18 V, with a subthreshold swing of 74 mV dec^-1 and intrinsic gain of 4.151 × 10⁴ . These results reveal that the shrink film can be generally used as a substrate for downsizing OFETs and improving their performance.

Contact Resistance in Ambipolar Organic Field-Effect Transistors Measured by Confocal Photoluminescence Electro-Modulation Microscopy

Although it is theoretically expected that all organic semiconductors support ambipolar charge transport, most organic transistors either transport holes or electrons effectively. Single-layer ambipolar organic field-effect transistors enable the investigation of different mechanisms in hole and electron transport in a single device since the device architecture provides a controllable planar pn-junction within the transistor channel. However, a direct comparison of the injection barriers and of the channel conductivities between electrons and holes within the same device cannot be measured by standard electrical characterization. This article introduces a novel approach for determining threshold gate voltages for the onset of the ambipolar regime from the position of the pn-junction observed by photoluminescence electro-modulation (PLEM) microscopy. Indeed, the threshold gate voltage in the ambipolar bias regime considers a vanishing channel length, thus correlating the contact resistance. PLEM microscopy is a valuable tool to directly compare the contact and channel resistances for both carrier types in the same device. The reported results demonstrate that designing the metal/organic-semiconductor interfaces by aligning the bulk metal Fermi levels to the highest occupied molecular orbital or lowest unoccupied molecular orbital levels of the organic semiconductors is a too simplistic approach for optimizing the charge-injection process in organic field-effect devices.

Boolean-chemotaxis of logibots deciphering the motions of self-propelling microorganisms

We demonstrate the feasibility of a self-propelling mushroom motor, namely a 'logibot', as a functional unit for the construction of a host of optimized binary logic gates. Emulating the chemokinesis of unicellular prokaryotes or eukaryotes, the logibots made stimuli responsive conditional movements at varied speeds towards a pair of acid-alkali triggers. A series of integrative logic operations and cascaded logic circuits, namely, AND, NAND, NOT, OR, NOR, and NIMPLY, have been constructed employing the decisive chemotactic migrations of the logibot in the presence of the pH gradient established by the sole or coupled effects of acid (HCl-catalase) and alkali (NaOH) drips inside a peroxide bath. The imposed acid and/or alkali triggers across the logibots were realized as inputs while the logic gates were functionally reconfigured to several operational modes by varying the pH of the acid-alkali inputs. The self-propelling logibot could rapidly sense the external stimuli, decide, and act on the basis of intensities of the pH triggers. The impulsive responses of the logibots towards and away from the external acid-alkali stimuli were interpreted as the potential outputs of the logic gates. The external stimuli responsive self-propulsion of the logibots following different logic gates and circuits can not only be an eco-friendly alternative to the silicon-based computing operations but also be a promising strategy for the development of intelligent pH-responsive drug delivery devices.

Chemically Robust Ambipolar Organic Transistor Array Directly Patterned by Photolithography

Organic ambipolar transistor arrays for chemical sensors are prepared on a flexible plastic substrate with a bottom-gate bottom-contact configuration to minimize the damage to the organic semiconductors, for the first time, using a photolithographically patternable polymer semiconductor. Well-balanced ambipolar charge transport is achieved by introducing graphene electrodes because of the reduced contact resistance and energetic barrier for electron transport.

Orthogonal Ambipolar Semiconductor Nanostructures for Complementary Logic Gates

We report orthogonal ambipolar semiconductors that exhibit hole and electron transport in perpendicular directions based on aligned films of nanocrystalline "shish-kebabs" containing poly(3-hexylthiophene) (P3HT) and N,N'-di-n-octyl-3,4,9,10-perylenetetracarboxylic diimide (PDI) as p- and n-type components, respectively. Polarized optical microscopy, scanning electron microscopy, and X-ray diffraction measurements reveal a high degree of in-plane alignment. Relying on the orientation of interdigitated electrodes to enable efficient charge transport from either the respective p- or n-channel materials, we demonstrate semiconductor films with high anisotropy in the sign of charge carriers. Films of these aligned crystalline semiconductors were used to fabricate complementary inverter devices, which exhibited good switching behavior and a high noise margin of 80% of 1/2 Vdd. Moreover, complementary "NAND" and "NOR" logic gates were fabricated and found to exhibit excellent voltage transfer characteristics and low static power consumption. The ability to optimize the performance of these devices, simply by adjusting the solution concentrations of P3HT and PDI, makes this a simple and versatile method for preparing ambipolar organic semiconductor devices and high-performance logic gates. Further, we demonstrate that this method can also be applied to mixtures of PDI with another conjugated polymer, poly[2,5-bis(3-tetradecylthiophen-2-yl)thieno[3,2-b]thiophene]) (PBTTT), with better hole transport characteristics than P3HT, opening the door to orthogonal ambipolar semiconductors with higher performance.

High-Mobility Ambipolar Organic Thin-Film Transistor Processed From a Nonchlorinated Solvent

Polymer semiconductor PDPPF-DFT, which combines furan-substituted diketopyrrolopyrrole (DPP) and a 3,4-difluorothiophene base, has been designed and synthesized. PDPPF-DFT polymer semiconductor thin film processed from nonchlorinated hexane is used as an active layer in thin-film transistors. As a result, balanced hole and electron mobilities of 0.26 and 0.12 cm(2)/(V s) are achieved for PDPPF-DFT. This is the first report of using nonchlorinated hexane solvent for fabricating high-performance ambipolar thin-film transistor devices.

Ink-Jet Printed CMOS Electronics from Oxide Semiconductors

Complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) technology with high transconductance and signal gain is mandatory for practicable digital/analog logic electronics. However, high performance all-oxide CMOS logics are scarcely reported in the literature; specifically, not at all for solution-processed/printed transistors. As a major step toward solution-processed all-oxide electronics, here it is shown that using a highly efficient electrolyte-gating approach one can obtain printed and low-voltage operated oxide CMOS logics with high signal gain (≈21 at a supply voltage of only 1.5 V) and low static power dissipation.

Regulating charge injection in ambipolar organic field-effect transistors by mixed self-assembled monolayers

We report on a technique using mixed self-assembled monolayers (SAMs) to finely regulate ambipolar charge injection in polymer organic field-effect transistors. Differing from the other works that employ single SAM specifically for efficient charge injection in p-type and n-type transistors, we blend two different SAMs of alkyl- and perfluoroalkyl thiols at different ratios and apply them to ambipolar OFETs and inverter. Thanks to the utilization of ambipolar semiconductor and one SAM mixture, the device and circuit fabrications are facile with only one step for semiconductor deposition and another for SAM treatment. This is much simpler with respect to the conventional scheme for the unipolar-device-based complementary circuitry that demands separate deposition and processing for individual p-channel and n-channel transistors. Our results show that the mixed-SAM treatments not only improve ambipolar charge injection manifesting as higher hole- and electron-mobility and smaller threshold voltage but also gradually tune the device characteristics to reach a desired condition for circuit application. Therefore, this simple but useful approach is promising for ambipolar electronics.

Self-organization of functional materials in confinement

This Account aims to describe our experience in the use of patterning techniques for addressing the self-organization processes of materials into spatially confined regions on technologically relevant surfaces. Functional properties of materials depend on their chemical structure, their assembly, and spatial distribution at the solid state; the combination of these factors determines their properties and their technological applications. In fact, by controlling the assembly processes and the spatial distribution of the resulting structures, functional materials can be guided to technological and specific applications. We considered the principal self-organizing processes, such as crystallization, dewetting and phase segregation. Usually, these phenomena produce defective molecular films, compromising their use in many technological applications. This issue can be overcome by using patterning techniques, which induce molecules to self-organize into well-defined patterned structures, by means of spatial confinement. In particular, we focus our attention on the confinement effect achieved by stamp-assisted deposition for controlling size, density, and positions of material assemblies, giving them new chemical/physical functionalities. We review the methods and principles of the stamp-assisted spatial confinement and we discuss how they can be advantageously exploited to control crystalline order/orientation, dewetting phenomena, and spontaneous phase segregation. Moreover, we highlight how physical/chemical properties of soluble functional materials can be driven in constructive ways, by integrating them into operating technological devices.

High-speed, inkjet-printed carbon nanotube/zinc tin oxide hybrid complementary ring oscillators

The materials combination of inkjet-printed single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs) and zinc tin oxide (ZTO) is very promising for large-area thin-film electronics. We compare the characteristics of conventional complementary inverters and ring oscillators measured in air (with SWCNT p-channel field effect transistors (FETs) and ZTO n-channel FETs) with those of ambipolar inverters and ring oscillators comprised of bilayer SWCNT/ZTO FETs. This is the first such comparison between the performance characteristics of ambipolar and conventional inverters and ring oscillators. The measured signal delay per stage of 140 ns for complementary ring oscillators is the fastest for any ring oscillator circuit with printed semiconductors to date.