Pentacene transistors with polymer gate dielectrics on metallized optical fibers

It is difficult to deposit a very thin polymer layer onto a fiber-shaped substrate from solution because the high interfacial energy can lead to dewetting. This difficulty presents itself when attempting to apply a gate dielectric to conductive fiber substrates during the fabrication of fiber transistors for use in applications such as “electrotextiles” and optical switches. In this article, we present a dip coating process that applies a gate dielectric to metal-coated optical fibers with high uniformity and reproducibility, resulting in pentacene field-effect transistors with excellent transistor characteristics including mobilities up to 0.4 cm²/Vs and on/off ratios up to 7000. In one case, a memory effect was demonstrated. Several gate dielectrics were successfully applied to the optical fibers, suggesting a baseline set of suitable materials for this purpose. A thorough study of the dip coating conditions is presented, including proposed explanations of the effects of different coating procedures and solution physical properties. Finally, alternative architectures that would provide much higher W/L ratios and on-currents are described.