Unraveling Structure and Device Operation of Organic Permeable Base Transistors

Abstract

Organic permeable base transistors (OPBTs) are of great interest for flexible electronic circuits, as they offer very large on-current density and a record-high transition frequency. They rely on a vertical device architecture with current transport through native pinholes in a central base electrode. This study investigates the impact of pinhole density and pinhole diameter on the DC device performance in OPBTs based on experimental data and TCAD simulation results. A pinhole density of NPin = 54 µm−2 and pinhole diameters around LPin = 15 nm are found in the devices. Simulations show that a variation of pinhole diameter and density around these numbers has only a minor impact on the DC device characteristics. A variation of the pinhole diameter and density by up to 100% lead to a deviation of less than 4% in threshold voltage, on/off current ratio, and sub-threshold slope. Hence, the fabrication of OPBTs with reliable device characteristics is possible regardless of statistical deviations in thin film formation. © 2020 The Authors. Published by WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim