An investigation into the electronic transport properties of organic semiconductors and thin film devices

有机薄膜半导体为电子器件和电路的制造提供了一个有竞争力的选择。我们研究这些材料的主要原因是成本低，一些沉积工艺适合大面积制造，以及沉积膜物理性质的可变性。目前，使用有机薄膜的发光二极管显示器正在制造中，许多有机薄膜晶体管电路的原型已经被报道。与单晶半导体不同，我们对有机薄膜半导体的理解是有限的。与能带结构、杂质态、电荷激发和复合等有关的许多重要问题仍有待解决。对于电子电路和器件而言，影响其性能的重要参数一直是电荷迁移率。该参数通常控制器件的工作速度，器件在放大电路中工作时的增益以及开关时的电荷动态。我们提出的研究解决了许多相关问题，并试图从理论上（与实验结合）检查电荷迁移率如何增加到当前可实现的值之外。我们早期的工作表明这是很有可能的。这项工作的另一个意义是在这个即将到来的领域培训技术人员和工程师，以应对可预见的需求，特别是在柔性电子和传感电路等领域。鉴于医疗保健和环境工程方面的普遍需求类型，加拿大的工业在这些领域处于有利地位，可以脱颖而出。

Organic thin film semiconductors offer a competitive alternative for the making of electronic devices and circuits. Our key reasons for studying these materials arise from low cost, that some deposition processes are amenable to large area fabrication, and the variability in the physical properties of the deposited films. Currently, light-emitting diode displays using organic thin films are being manufactured and numerous prototype organic thin film transistor circuits have been reported. Unlike the case of single crystal semiconductors, our understanding of the organic thin film semiconductors is limited. Many important issues linked to energy band structures, impurity states, charge excitation and recombination, etc. remain to be resolved.  As far as the electronic circuits and devices are concerned, the important parameter affecting performance has been the charge mobility. This parameter generally controls the speed of operation of the device, the gain when the device operates in an amplifier circuit and the charge dynamic during switching. Our proposed research addresses a number of related issues and attempts to examine theoretically (in conjunction with experiments) how charge mobility can increase beyond its current achievable value. Our earlier work suggests that this is very possible. The other significance of this work is to train technologists and engineers in this upcoming field to cope with foreseeable demands particularly in areas such as flexible electronics and sensory circuits. These are areas where the industries in Canada are in a good position to excel given the type of prevailing demands in health care and environmental engineering.