Modification of the charge transport properties of the copper phthalocyanine/poly(vinyl alcohol) interface using cationic or anionic surfactant for field-effect transistor performance enhancement

We report on the performance enhancement of organic field-effect transistors prepared using cross-linked poly(vinyl alcohol) as gate dielectric and copper phthalocyanine as channel semiconductor through gate dielectric surface treatment. The gate dielectric surface was treated using either a cationic surfactant, hexadecyltrimethylammonium bromide (CTAB), or an anionic surfactant, sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS). We determined the charge-carrier field-effect mobility ( μFET) in these transistors as a function of the effective channel thickness in the channel bottleneck, near to the transistor source. When compared to the untreated devices, in the devices treated with CTAB or SDS, the channel formation occurs at lower gate voltage and the carrier mobility in the thinnest channel region, corresponding to the immediate vicinity of the insulator/semiconductor interface, is significantly higher. The surfactant treatment leads to a tenfold increase in μFET and significant enhancement in capacitance, on/off current ratio and transconductance of the transistor.