Broadly applicable hydrophilic additive enhances electrochemical transistor function

Abstract

Organic semiconductors offering efficient mixed ionic-electronic charge transport arekey components of organic electrochemical transistors (OECTs) needed for futurebioelectronics and other technologies. However, hydrophobic semiconductors typi-cally have limited ion mobility and are unstable in aqueous environments, restrictingOECT applications. To address these issues, we report a broadly applicable strategy forhigh-performance OECTs by blending polymeric semiconductors with a photocrosslink-able hydrophilic ion-conducting supplement, poly(ethyleneglycol)-dimethylacrylate(PEGDMA). The result is ordered, interconnected semiconductor domains within anamorphous ion-conducting matrix, enabling rapid and reversible doping/dedoping with-out compromising charge transport. This approach enhances OECT performance acrossdiverse electrolytes, semiconductors, and device architectures. Furthermore, PEGDMAenables high-resolution photopatterning of both semiconductors (<0.4 μm) and electro-lytes (<2 μm), affording high-stability OECTs sustaining >10,000 cycles. This approachalso enables wafer-scale array fabrication of 2,548 OECTs on 2” wafer, and miniaturizedinverter, NAND, and NOR circuits. Also demonstrated are integration of these OECTswith a photosensor, creating a vision sensing array (10 × 10 pixels) that mimics visualimage processing similar to the brain’s perception system.