We briefly review the history of thin-film transistors and their applications. Two main application routes are. The discovery in the sixties and seventies of organic molecules with semiconducting properties has in the nineties of last century led to the advent of thin-film semiconductor technologies based on organic semiconductors, which are generally referred to as "plastic electronics" or "organic electronics". Early plastic thin-film transistors [1] made use of polymer semiconductors with very low charge carrier mobilities, of the order of 10~(-4) cm~2/Vs to 10~(-3) cm~2/Vs. And since it was also known that polymer semiconductors can be highly doped, large efforts were spent to use highly doped plastics as contact materials for source, drain and gate electrodes. Finally, polymers with good breakdown fields and low leakage currents can be employed as gate dielectric. This resulted in "all polymer" [2] thin-film transistors. This research was pushed all the way to integration into circuits on foils, e.g. in.
展开▼
