High performance nitrogen dioxide sensor based on organic field-effect transistor utilizing ultrathin CuPc/PTCDI-C8 heterojunction

•OFETs with a heterojunction structure consisting of p-type CuPc and n-type PTCDI-C8 organic semiconducting materials were fabricated.•The heterojunction OFET NO2 gas sensor exhibited 10 folds enhancement of sensitivity.•The heterojunction OFET NO2 sensor performance was strongly dependent on the active layer thickness.

Organic field-effect transistors (OFETs) with a heterojunction structure, consisting of the p-type and n-type organic semiconducting materials of copper phthalocyanine (CuPc) and the dioctyl perylene tetracarboxylic diimide (PTCDI-C8), respectively, were fabricated. The heterojunction OFETs were used as the nitrogen dioxide (NO2) gas sensors, and the sensing properties were characterized with the variation of PTCDI-C8 layer thicknesses. The results showed that the OFET sensors with the optimized film thickness of 0.5 nm PTCDI-C8 and 7 nm CuPc, had one order of magnitude enhancement of sensitivity, compared to the device with single CuPc active layer. The sensitivity improvement was attributed to the intensification of the charge transfer in the heterojunction structure while introducing the oxidizing gas of NO2.

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