Investigation of the Performance of Poly(Methyl-Acrylate) as a Gate Dielectric in Organic Thin-Film Transistors

In this study, we present two regioregular poly(3-hexylthiophene-2,5-diyl) (rr-P3HT)-based top-gate bottom-contact configured organic thin-film transistors (OTFTs) using poly(alpha-methyl acrylate) (PMA) and poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) polymers separately as gate insulators for comparison. In order to compare only the performance of the dielectrics, the other parts of the devices were kept qualitatively and quantitatively identical. Unlike PMMA, PMA is flexible, and flexibility is a desirable property for an OTFT. Thus, utilizing PMA can be advantageous if it supports higher performance of the transistor. In this respect, the electronic parameters of the fabricated devices were extracted from transfer and output characteristics to determine the performance of PMA in OTFT applications. Results showed that the mobility of the OTFT with PMA (PMA-OTFT) was nearly three times greater than that of the OTFT with PMMA (PMMA-OTFT), while the PMA-OTFT threshold voltage (V-TH) was slightly less than that of the PMMA-OTFT, which was likely because of the greater effective capacitance (C-EFF) of the PMA layer compared to that of the PMMA layer. This is the main advantage of the PMA. On the other hand, the major downside is found in the reduced on-to-off current (I-ON/I-OFF) and increased subthreshold swing originating from a huge off-current (I-OFF), implying the existence of a large gate leakage current. Increasing the thickness of the PMA layer could reduce such large gate leakage current. However, this would lead to additional increase in the OTFT operating voltage. Therefore, further studies are required to improve the insulating property of the PMA polymer in order to substitute it for the PMMA.