New publication from the SUNLAB: Journal of Materials Chemistry C
A collaboration between the Lessard Research Group and the SUNLAB resulted in a recent publication first-authored by MSc candidate Nicholas Dallaire, in the Journal of Materials Chemistry C. In this manuscript, the authors explore the effect of selective wavelength exposure on single walled carbon nanotube-based thin film transistors.
The fabrication of high-purity semiconducting single-walled carbon nanotubes (sc-SWNTs) often utilizes conjugated polymers to isolate the semiconducting from the metallic species. These polymers preferentially sort and disperse certain sc-SWNT chiralities and often remain wrapped around sc-SWNTs during device integration. In this study, the authors expose three different SWNT-based thin film transistors, each with a different dispersion polymer to three different laser wavelengths selected to overlap both the optical transitions of the sc-SWNTs and the polymer absorption.
The authors show that two phases emerge. An initial soak, where the devices change after an initial exposure which permanently increases the mobility. The second phase, the photo cycling, produces repeatable device performance between exposures “On Cycling” and post exposures “Off Cycling”, such as consistent threshold voltage shifts with an overall average shift of 3.6±0.6 V, highly dependent on the wavelength and polymer, thus providing greater motivation for tunable SWNT-based thin film transistor photodetectors. Although the general behavior is shared among most types and wavelengths, discrepancies in intensity emerge, especially when exciting the polymer. Hence, the authors show the importance of polymer choice when considering desirable parameters, in addition to their selected SWNT chirality. The results of this research will lead to improvements in SWNT-based thin film transistors. Applications include organic photodetectors.
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Nicholas J. Dallaire, Brendan Mirka, Joseph G. Manion, William J. Bodnaryk, Darry Fong, Alex Adronov, Karin Hinzer, and Benoît H. Lessard, Conjugated wrapping polymer influences on photoexcitation of single-walled carbon nanotube-based thin film transistors, J. Mater. Chem. C 11, 9161-9171 (2023) DOI: 10.1039/D3TC01484C