Organic Thin Film Transistor Fabricated with Soluble Pentacene Active Channel Layer and NiOx Electrodes

We report on the fabrication of soluble pentacene-based thin-film transistors (TFTs) that consist of $NiO_x$, poly-vinyl phenol (PVP), and Ni for the source-drain (SID) electrodes, gate dielectric, and gate electrode, respectively. The $NiO_x$ SID electrodes of which the work function is well matched to that of soluble pentacene are deposited on a soluble pentacenechannel by sputter deposited of NiO powder and show a moderately low but still effective transmittance of ~65% in the visible range along with a good sheet resistance of ${\sim}40{\Omega}/{\square}$. The maximum saturation current of our soluble pentacene-based TFT is about $15{\mu}A$ at a gate bias of -40showing a high field effect mobility of $0.06cm^2/Vs$ in the dark, and the on/off current ratio of our TFT is about $10^4$. It is concluded that jointly adopting $NiO_x$ for the S/D electrodes and PVP for gate dielectric realizes a high-quality soluble pentacene-based TFT.