Passivation effects on the stability of pentacene thin-film transistors with SnO2 prepared by ion-beam-assisted deposition

The long-term stability of pentacene thin-film transistors (TFTs) encapsulated with a transparent SnO2 thin-film prepared by ion-beam-assisted deposition (IBAD) was investigated. When a buffer layer of 100-nm SnO2 film had been thermally deposited to reduce ion-induced damage prior to the IBAD process, our encapsulated organic thin-film transistors (OTFTs) showed somewhat degraded field-effect mobility of 0.5 cm(2)/V that was initially 0.62 cm(2)/V s, while the OTFTs without a buffer layer showed a 60% reduction in field-effect mobility after the IBAD process. However, surprisingly, the mobility was sustained up to one month and then gradually degraded down to 0.35 cm(2)/V s, which was still three times higher than that of the OTFT without any encapsulation layer after 100 days in air. The encapsulated OTFTs also exhibited superior on/off current ratio of over 10(5) to that of the unprotected devices (similar to 10(4)), which was reduced from similar to 10(6) before aging. Therefore, the enhanced long-term stability of our encapsulated OTFTs should be attributed to good protection of permeation against H2O into the devices with the IBAD SnO2 thin film, which was identified as having a dense amorphous microstructure with lots of OH groups. Passivation effects on the electrical properties of OTFTs are discussed in terms of the physical and chemical properties of the barrier films. (c) 2005 American Vacuum Society.