Charge carrier transport in high purity perylene single crystal studied by time-of-flight measurements and through field effect transistor characteristics

Electronic transport has been studied by measuring the characteristics of field effect transistors using high purity perylene and the results have been compared with those from time-of-flight measurements. The purity of the material has been monitored by carrier trapping time and delayed fluorescence lifetime. Three types of field effect transistors have been studied: (1) thin film transistor, (2) transistor prepared by placing a single crystal flake on a substrate and (3) transistor fabricated on a single crystal by depositing electrodes and insulating layer onto it. Compared to thin film transistors prepared by evaporating perylene onto a SiO2/Si substrate, higher mobility values were obtained with transistors using single crystals, but the electrical characteristics of the transistors were far from ideal: large threshold gate voltage observed in the second class of FETs indicated that a high density of traps are present at the interface between the organics and the insulator. A transistor of the third class showed that it functioned indeed as a FET with a reasonably high mobility, but the operation was not stable enough to allow reliable measurements. Much remains to be improved in the design and construction of a perylene FET before the potentiality of the material is fully developed. Also, it remains to be explored to what extent the bulk purity and the molecular order at the organics/insulator interface influence the transport of the charge carriers in an organic FET.