High Quality Organic Semiconductor Thin-film Transistors Printed on Plastic Substrates using Transfer Printing

Transfer Printing has been used to fabricate organic thin-film transistors onto plastic substrates. This method uses pressure and temperature to transfer a patterned layer from one substrate (on which the thin-film material was originally fabricated) to a second substrate. This thermal treatment is similar to an annealing process and is therefore expected to improve the quality of organic films from the small molecule and polymeric classes. X-ray diffraction patterns of a pentacene thin-film transfer printed onto a plastic substrate show sharp $(00l)$ reflections corresponding to a c-axis correlation length of 432$\AA$. X-ray diffraction patterns of the original pentacene thin-film thermally evaporated onto an SiO$_2$ surface also show sharp $(00l)$ reflections but exhibit a c-axis correlation length of 392$\AA$. The transistor characteristics of these high quality, transfer printed organic materials will be correlated with thin-film quality.