Prospect of silver nanowire (AgNW) in development of simple and cost-effective vertical organic light-emitting transistors

Abstract

Despite a great potential for low-voltage display applications, vertical organic light-emitting transistors (VOLETs) suffer serious issues of high-cost and complex fabrication techniques, notably for the intermediate electrode. To address this problem, this study demonstrates a cost-effective and simple approach to fabricate a VOLET device by utilising spin-coated silver nanowires (AgNWs) as an intermediate electrode. AgNWs exhibit high electrical conductivity, high porosity and high optical transparency, which qualify them as a perfect candidate for the intermediate electrode in VOLETs. To show the potential of AgNWs in VOLET devices using a facile, cost-effective spin-coated method, two types of VOLETs, namely, the Schottky barrier (SB) VOLET and static induction transistor (SIT) VOLET, were fabricated and analysed. Interestingly, both the devices show transistor behaviour when the V_g is varied, implying a fully functional VOLET device. We believe that this is one of the simplest methods to fabricate VOLETs without compromising the device characteristics demonstrated to date.