Light- and bias-induced effects in pentacene-based thin film phototransistors with a photocurable polymer dielectric

•The prolonged and combined action of light and bias on pentacene OPTs is analyzed.•Equations modeling organic phototransistor behavior are developed.•Information about photon dose and gate bias during illumination is fundamental.•Long-lived traps at insulator-OSC interface cause threshold voltage instability.•Gate-bias stress effect can modulate the photosensitivity of organic devices.

In this work, pentacene-based thin film phototransistors were fabricated with a photocurable polymer insulator and their electrical stability was monitored when the devices were exposed to light sources at different wavelengths. The magnitude of the photocurrent induced by illumination was found to be the result of two distinct factors: a direct photocurrent, related to electron–hole pair generation, and a current enhancement caused by a threshold voltage shift. The direction of threshold translation is attributed to the nature of trap states, specifically those located in the pentacene film near the interface with the polymer, and is affected by a measurement-induced effect, so that the photosensitivity can be modulated by a persistent gate bias during illumination. The equations for these two contributions were developed to study the light effects on material structure, the trapping process of electrons at the insulator–semiconductor interface and the photoconductive efficiency in the organic semiconductor.

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