Temperature and gate voltage dependence of hole mobility in polycrystalline oligothiophene thin film transistors

We have performed current-voltage measurement on polycrystalline sexithiophene (6 T) thin film transistors at temperatures ranging from 10 to 300 K. A method is developed to extract the carrier mobility from an analysis of the transfer characteristics. In particular, data are corrected for contact resistance. The carrier mobility is found to increase quasilinearly with gate voltage at room temperature. The dependence becomes superlinear at low temperatures. The temperature dependence shows three domains. For 100 K < T < 300 K, the mobility is thermally activated with an activation energy of around 0.1 eV. The activation energy reduces to 5 meV for 25 K < T < 100 K. Finally, the mobility is practically temperature independent for temperatures lower than 25 K. The data are explained by a model where charge transport is limited by a high concentration of traps at grain boundaries. At high temperatures, charge transfer at boundaries occurs via thermionic emission, while tunnel effect takes place at low temperatures. The energy distribution of traps is determined, and various features predicted by the model are outlined. (C) 2000 American Institute of Physics. [S0021-8979(00)02504-4].