High-speed organic single-crystal transistors gated with short-channel air gaps: Efficient hole and electron injection in organic semiconductor crystals

•Short-channel, organic filed-effect transistors gated with air gaps have developed.•High mobility operations were demonstrated for rubrene and PDIF-CN2 single crystals.•Low contact resistance was obtained between a flat organic crystal and a metal film.•High cutoff frequency of 25 MHz was demonstrated for rubrene single-crystal devices.

Short-channel, high-mobility organic filed-effect transistors (OFETs) are developed based on single crystals gated with short-channel air gaps. The high hole mobility of 10 cm2/Vs for rubrene, and high electron mobility of 4 cm2/Vs for PDIF-CN2 crystals are demonstrated even with a short channel length of 6 μm. Such performance is due to low contact resistance in these devices estimated to be as low as ∼0.5 kΩ cm at gate voltage of −4 V for rubrene. With the benefit of the short channel length of 4.5 μm in a new device architecture with less parasitic capacitance, the cutoff frequency of the rubrene air–gap device was estimated to be as high as 25 MHz for drain voltage of −15 V, which is the fastest reported for p-type OFETs, operating in ambient conditions.

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