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Polymers for Transistors

  • Reference work entry
  • First Online:
Encyclopedia of Polymeric Nanomaterials

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Synonyms

Organic field-effect transistor; Organic semiconductor; Plastic electronics

Definition

Polymer: A polymer is a macromolecule with high molecular mass and composed of the repetition of structural units of significantly lower molecular weights. Polymers often possess very different chemical and physical properties compared to the smaller molecules they are composed of.

Transistor: A transistor is a semiconducting device that is used to switch and amplify electronic signals. The electric current flows between two electrodes, source and drain, and is controlled by an electric field applied to a third electrode, the gate.

Historical Background

The field-effect transistor principle was first patented in 1925 by Julius Edgar Lilienfeld, but it would take nearly another quarter of a century until the first working field-effect transistor (FET) based on a germanium crystal was built at Bell Laboratories in 1948 by William Shockley, John Bardeen, and Walter Brattain. Since its...

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Chemistry and Centre for Plastic Electronics, Imperial College London, London, SW7 2AZ, UK

    Bob C. Schroeder & Iain McCulloch

Authors
  1. Bob C. Schroeder
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  2. Iain McCulloch
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Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Bob C. Schroeder or Iain McCulloch .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Center for Fiber and Textile Science, Kyoto Institute of Technology, Matsugasaki, Sakyo-ku, Kyoto, Japan

    Shiro Kobayashi

  2. Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research, Mainz, Germany

    Klaus Müllen

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Schroeder, B.C., McCulloch, I. (2015). Polymers for Transistors. In: Kobayashi, S., Müllen, K. (eds) Encyclopedia of Polymeric Nanomaterials. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-29648-2_13

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