Carbon Nanotubes as Injection Electrodes for Organic Thin Film Transistors

We have investigated the charge injection efficiency of carbon nanotube electrodes for organic semiconducting layers and compared their performance to that of traditional noble metal electrodes. Our results reveal that charge injection from a single carbon nanotube electrode is more than an order of magnitude more efficient than charge injection from metal electrodes. Moreover, organic thin film transistors that use arrays of carbon nanotube electrodes display considerable effective mobilities (0.14 cm2/(V·s)) and nearly ideal linear output characteristics. These results indicate that carbon nanotubes should be considered a viable alternative to metal electrodes for next-generation organic field-effect transistors.