Stability study of all-polymer field-effect transistors

Abstract

We report on a systematic study on the stability of organic field effect transistors built solely from materials which can be utilised in conventional, highly productive mass-printing methods. We compare devices based on two polymer semiconductors that show good performance in transistors: poly(9,9-dioctylfluorene-co-bithiophene), a commercially available material, and poly(triphenylamine), a material especially designed for high stability. We performed tests of the evolution of the important transistor properties under ambient storage conditions, under the influence of elevated and low temperatures, under illumination with UV-light and under operation of the devices. We find a significantly improved stability of the devices based on poly(triphenylamine) in all of the experiments and comment on the relevance of the stability issues for prospected applications.