Current saturation effect for pentacene-based static induction transistor under negative drain-source and gate voltages

•OSIT ITO/Pentacene/Al/Pentacene/Au under negative VDS and VG is characterized.•Current saturation effect of the pentacene OSIT under negative VDS and VG is seen.•VON moved to larger negative voltages with increasing negative VG.•The movement step of VG gets smaller after keeping the device for enough time.•The possible mechanisms for such a kind of current modulation are discussed.

Usually, the drain-source current (IDS) increases with positive drain-source voltage (VDS) for pentacene-based organic static induction transistor (OSIT) ITO(Source)/Pentacene/Al(Gate)/Pentacene/Au(Drain) and it shows an inherent rectifying property under negative gate voltages (VG), i.e. the slope of IDS vs. VDS curve increases with VDS but without any current saturation effect. In this paper, we investigated the electrical characteristics of pentacene-based OSIT ITO/Pentacene(80 nm)/Al(15 nm)/Pentacene(80 nm)/Au under negative VDS and VG, and found that IDS changed from rectifying property to saturation effect when the magnitude of negative VDS was increased from 0 V to −6 V under negative VG, and the turn-on voltage (VON) moved to larger negative voltages when the magnitude of negative VG increased and the movement step of VON gets smaller after keeping the device for a long time, and the possible mechanisms for such a kind of current modulation were discussed.

Graphical abstractCurrent saturation effect for pentacene-based static induction transistor (OSIT) ITO(Source)/Pentacene(80 nm)/Al(Gate, 15 nm)/Pentacene (80 nm)/Au(Drain) under negative drain-source and gate voltages.Figure optionsDownload full-size imageDownload as PowerPoint slide