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Introduction.—Since their discovery [1,2] organic Experimental.—The O-LEFT devices were fabricated
field-effect transistors (OFETs) have been investigated using heavily doped n-type silicon substrates (3–5 cm
extensively as demonstrated in recent review articles resistivity) covered by a high quality thermally grown
[3,4]. During the last ten years interest shifted from oxide with a thickness of about 285 nm acting as a gate
material related topics to morphology optimization, electrode and a gate oxide, respectively. A thin chromium
both for vacuum-deposited small molecules and poly- adhesive layer was deposited on the entire oxide surface
meric semiconductors. The influence of substrate surface before a 50 nm Au layer was deposited. The Au source
treatment [5] was also found to be of major importance to and drain electrodes were photolithographically struc-
control the film morphology of the semiconductor, which tured. They are configured as interdigitated fingers with
determines the charge carrier mobility, trap distribution, a channel length of 5 m and a channel width of 20 cm.
etc. [6]. OFETs have been proven suitable to drive organic The corresponding layout of the electrodes is displayed in
light-emitting diodes (OLEDs) [7,8], thus showing a Fig. 1. These substrate structures were then treated by the
promising device integration perspective. silane coupling agent n-octadecyldimethylchlorosilane to
Organic field-effect transistors are typically operated improve tetracene film homogeneity and substrate cover-
in unipolar accumulation mode, even though in principle age. The treated substrates were directly transferred into
ambipolar operation should be possible. The ambipolar an evaporation chamber by avoiding any exposure to
operation mode may lead to carrier recombination, for- ambient air. Tetracene (Chemos GmbH) was thermally
mation of excitons, and light emission. Such a light- evaporated at a base pressure of 1 106 mbar with a
emitting field-effect transistor would be the smallest onto the prestructured substrates.
deposition rate of 5 A=s
possible integration of light source and switch, and has The output and transfer characteristics of the O-LEFT
the additional advantage to allow control of the loca- were measured with an HP parameter analyzer (HP
tion of the charge recombination zone by means of ap- 4155A) and the light emission intensity was detected
plied electric fields. Provided it can be made from thin by a Si-photodiode placed about 2 mm above the emitting
organic films, the organic light-emitting film transistor O-LEFT surface. The output photocurrent of the Si-
(O-LEFT) would constitute a crucial building block for photodiode was also fed into the parameter analyzer.
applications in the optical information technology and
nanotechnology. The idea of such a light-emitting tran-
sistor based on -6T single crystals was reported recently (a)
[9]; however, the publication was subject to a scientific
misconduct investigation [10] and finally withdrawn [11]. W = 5 µm
Since then, despite numerous attempts worldwide, light (b)
emission from an OFET, either based on single crystals or Source/Drain
on thin films, has not been published.
Here we report the observation of light emission from Tetracene
an organic field-effect transistor based on a vacuum-
deposited tetracene thin film. The organic light-emitting L=2mm
SiO2
film transistor exhibits electrical characteristics similar Source/Drain n-doped Si
to a unipolar OFET and its light emission intensity can be
modulated by the gate and drain voltage. An explanation FIG. 1. Electrode configuration of the utilized O-LEFT:
is proposed for the unexpected electron injection into (a) interdigitated electrode structure of an O-LEFT, (b) cross
tetracene from gold electrodes. section of two neighboring Au electrodes.
The electroluminescence spectrum of the O-LEFT was to a better-balanced hole-to-electron ratio and hence
recorded with an optical simultaneous multichannel ana- to stronger luminescence. However, as shown by the
lyzer. A digital camera in combination with an optical saturation of the drain currents, any electron current
microscope inside a glovebox was used to visualize the has to be vanishingly small compared to the hole current.
light emission of the operating transistor in order to There is, however, an experimental fact that contradicts
determine the lateral position of the emission zone. classical transistor theory, namely, the almost fixed onset
Results and discussion.—Typical output characteristics of the light emission at VDS 20 V independent of the
of an O-LEFT are displayed in Fig. 2. It exhibits the utilized gate voltage. Following thin-film transistor
characteristics of a unipolar field-effect transistor with theory one would expect the onset of ambipolar operation
good saturation behavior. The transistor operates in the for drain voltages exceeding the gate voltage [12]. In our
hole accumulation mode. The electrical transfer charac- devices, however (see Fig. 4) the onset of light output,
teristics are displayed in Fig. 3. Its unusual saturation resembling the onset of electron injection, starts at a
behavior is assigned to contact resistors on the source common drain voltage of 20 V, even for gate voltages
electrode as suggested by theoretical calculations [12]. up to 80 V. In the present device only the intensity of
Field-effect hole mobilities and threshold voltages, as the emitted light changes. A possible model for this
derived from p a
fit to the experimental data in the linear atypical transistor behavior will be given at the end of
regime of the ID VGS plot of the transfer characteristics the paper after having collected all experimental evi-
[3], are h 5 102 cm2 =V s and Vth 25 V, re- dence. In order to prove that the observed light emission
spectively, for VGS 80 V. On=off ratios in the range is not due to possible artifacts, such as dielectric break-
of 1 106 were also determined from the transfer char- down phenomena and leakage currents through the gate
acteristics. The threshold voltage of 25 V indicates a oxide, the electroluminescence spectrum of the O-LEFT
high concentration of trap states and suggests the presence device has been recorded and compared to published
of injection barriers. Indeed, the S-shaped output charac- charge recombination and exciton emission spectra in
teristics at small voltages indicate that even holes expe- tetracene. The O-LEFT emission spectrum is shown in
rience an injection barrier in reaching the tetracene Fig. 6 and exhibits the typical spectral shape of tetracene
highest occupied molecular orbital (HOMO) level from thin-film emission centered at 540 nm [13–15]. The lu-
the Au electrode [12]. minance was determined to be 45 Cd=m2 . However, this
The electrical characteristics show no indication for value can be considered only a rough estimate due to
ambipolar transport, neither was it possible to operate the poor optical coupling of the light-emitting area to the
transistor in pure n-type inversion mode. Obviously, the luminance detection. The corresponding luminance effi-
electron mobility is low and in addition the electron ciency of 0:0024 Cd=A shows that mainly holes account
injection is weak. However, the significant light output for the measured source-drain currents in the device
at higher voltages confirms the injection of both electrons containing only a small fraction of both charge carrier
and holes. The optical characteristics of the same O- types that recombine radiatively. This also reveals the fact
LEFT device as in Figs. 2 and 3 are displayed in Figs. 4 that electron injection is weak compared to hole injection.
and 5. At first glance the optical response of the device The second possibility to generate light would be elec-
is in agreement with expectations. The light emission trons leaking through the gate oxide and recombining
associated with the electrical output characteristics is with holes in the tetracene layer. To check this possibility
increasing with increasing source-drain voltages VDS the gate current was monitored parallel to all electric
even at saturated drain currents (ID ). This is attributed measurements. It was found in the A range at zero drain
to an augmented electron injection, which in turn leads voltage decreasing to half its value with increasing
-8
drain current I D [mA]
0 -12 0
drain current ID [mA]
-6 -20 -20
-40 -8 -40
-4 -60 -60
-80 -80
-4
-2
0 0
0 -20 -40 -60 -80 0 -20 -40 -60 -80
drain-source voltage [VDS] gate-source voltage VGS [V]
FIG. 2. Output characteristics of the tetracene O-LEFT for FIG. 3. Transfer characteristics of the tetracene O-LEFT for
different gate-source voltages. different drain-source voltages.
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-10 0 31
-8 -20 25
-40
-6 -60 19
-4
-80 12
-2 6
0 0
FIG. 5. Optical transfer characteristics of the tetracene FIG. 7 (color). Picture of an operating O-LEFT taken
O-LEFT as recorded by a photodiode for different drain-source through an optical microscope. Source (S) and drain (D)
voltages. electrodes are arranged as shown in Fig. 1(a).
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