Organic Thin Film Transistors with Contacts Printed from Metal Nanoparticles

Metal nanoparticles were studied as solution printable precursors to highly conductive elements for electronic device applications. Dispersions of gold and silver nanoparticles stabilized respectively with butanethiol and hexadecylamine in organic solvents were used to prepare electrode features for organic thin film transistors (OTFTs) via stencil printing. The printed features, annealed at a relatively low temperature of 140-160°C, yielded metal electrodes with conductivities resembling those of vacuum-evaporated pure metals. The OTFTs with the source and drain electrodes of this nature exhibited field effect transistor performance identical to those of devices having vacuum-evaporated metal electrodes.