Studies of gold nanoparticles as precursors to printed conductive features for thin-film transistors

Gold nanoparticles stabilized with various alkanethiols were studied as printable precursors for fabricating electrically conductive elements for printed electronics. Gold nanoparticle features were printed using stencil and microcontact techniques and then converted to highly conductive features for thin-film transistors (TFTs) at relatively low annealing temperatures. TFT devices with printed source/drain electrodes of this nature exhibited similar or better field-effect transistor (FET) characteristics than those with vacuum-evaporated gold electrodes. The improved performance was attributable to the presence of alkanethiol stabilizers on the printed electrode surface, which enabled intimate electrode/semiconductor interfacial interactions. Different alkanethiol stabilizers exerted different effects on the decomposition profiles of gold nanoparticles but not on FET performance.