Date of Award

9-27-2023

Publication Type

Thesis

Degree Name

M.Sc.

Department

Chemistry and Biochemistry

Keywords

Flexible Electronics;Green Electronics;Organic Field-Effect Transistors

Supervisor

Simon Rondeau-Gagne

Supervisor

Tricia Carmichael

Rights

info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Abstract

An investigation into the use of greener dielectric and substrate materials, specifically shellac and paper, was done through the development of paper-based organic thin film transistors. Shellac and paper both hold advantageous properties that were explored in Chapter III, through the optimization in the fabrication of the devices and an evaluation of the electrical properties of these newly developed organic transistors. Different designs were explored using two common DPP-based polymers, P(DPP-T) and P(DPP-TVT), as the active materials, with Design #2 (bottom-gate top-contact) proving to be the best performing device according to the on/off ratio, charge mobilities and threshold voltage. Shellac was able to mitigate the roughness of the paper substrate, allowing the creation of a good dielectric/semiconducting interface which influences the performance. With a founding knowledge of the electrical capabilities of the materials in paper-based organic transistors, the physical properties of the devices were evaluated through a series of controlled, bending tests (Chapter IV). Repetitive tensile bending led to the formation of cracks in the material which heavily influenced the device performance, while compressive bending created peaks instead. The direction of the crack or peak formation relative to the channel pathway also proved to play a direct role in the device performance. Since the charge carriers can migrate alongside the cracks, the creation of the fractures perpendicular to the channel route had a far greater impact on the movement of the charge carriers than did parallel to the pathway. In summary, our studies confirm the successful use of shellac and paper in the fabrication of OFETs, with promising electrical and mechanical properties that contribute to the potential for the integration of these greener, flexible electronics in real-world applications.

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