Inkjet Printed Circuits with 2D Semiconductor Inks for High-Performance Electronics

Air-stable semiconducting inks suitable for complementary logic are key to create low-power printed integrated circuits (ICs). High-performance printable electronic inks with 2D materials have the potential to enable the next generation of high performance low-cost printed digital electronics. Here, the authors demonstrate air-stable, low voltage (<5 V) operation of inkjet-printed n-type molybdenum disulfide (MoS2), and p-type indacenodithiophene-co-benzothiadiazole (IDT-BT) field-effect transistors (FETs), estimating an average switching time of tau(MoS2) approximate to 4.1 mu s for the MoS2 FETs. They achieve this by engineering high-quality MoS2 and air-stable IDT-BT inks suitable for inkjet-printing complementary pairs of n-type MoS2 and p-type IDT-BT FETs. They then integrate MoS2 and IDT-BT FETs to realize inkjet-printed complementary logic inverters with a voltage gain |A(v)| approximate to 4 when in resistive load configuration and |A(v)| approximate to 1.4 in complementary configuration. These results represent a key enabling step towards ubiquitous long-term stable, low-cost printed digital ICs.

Automated summary

The authors demonstrate air-stable, low voltage operation of inkjet-printed MoS2 and IDT-BT FETs, achieving complementary logic inverters with promising application prospects.