Selective solution shearing deposition of high performance TIPS-pentacene polymorphs through chemical patterning

Methods for the solution deposition of organic semiconductors (OSCs) show great potential for the production of large-area, inexpensive, and flexible organic electronics. A solution deposition method called solution shearing has consistently been shown to yield thin film transistors with improved performance over those created via other solution-based approaches. However, the need for discrete, electronically isolated devices requires the parallel development of a facile means of pattern definition compatible with the solution shearing process. In our work, we use a simple chemical prepatterning method to enable the solution shearing deposition of the small molecule OSC TIPS-pentacene on substrates with feature sizes as small as 100 µm. Grazing incidence x-ray diffraction (GIXD) was also used to confirm the existence of high performance TIPS-pentacene polymorphs in the patterned thin films. Mobilities as high as 1.13 cm2V−1s−1were obtained on 400 µm wide patterns by depositing a high-performance, metastable polymorph of TIPS-pentacene.