Enhance the lifetime and bias stress reliability in organic vertical transistor by UV/Ozone treatment

In this paper, we use UV/Ozone treatment to improve the lifetime and bias stress reliability of organic transistor with vertical channel. Even if vertical organic transistor exhibits better bias stress reliability than organic field effect transistor (OFET) due to bulk conduction mechanism, poor lifetime performance is still a challenge. Adding octadecyltrichlorosilane (OTS) to treat the vertical channel can reduce the trapping state and hence improve the bias stress ability. However, off-current is much higher after 6 days and lifetime performance is degraded. On the other hand, after 4000-s on-state bias stress, stable output current and on/off current ratio are demonstrated by using UV/Ozone to treat vertical channels. Threshold voltage shift is only -0.02 V which is much smaller than OFET with the same organic semiconductor material. Furthermore, the output current is also an order enhanced. Nevertheless, unlike device with OTS treatment, no obvious degradation is observed for UV/Ozone treated devices even after 170 days. With UV/Ozone treatment, the output current, bias stress reliability and lifetime were all improved. It makes vertical transistor become a promising device for the further application in display technology and flexible electronics.