Two university research teams collaborated to develop thin, transparent semiconductors, which could become the foundation for cheap, high-performance displays.
Research teams led by Zhenan Bao, professor of chemical engineering at Stanford, and Jinsong Huang, assistant professor of mechanical and materials engineering at University of Nebraska-Lincoln used their new process to make organic thin-film transistors with electronic characteristics comparable to those found in expensive, curved-screen television displays based on a form of silicon technology.
They achieved their speed boost by altering the basic process for making thin film organic transistors.
First they spun the platter faster. Second they only coated a tiny portion of the spinning surface, equivalent to the size of a postage stamp.
These innovations had the effect of depositing a denser concentration of the organic molecules into a more regular alignment.
The result was a great improvement in carrier mobility, which measures how quickly electrical charges travel through the transistor.
The researchers called this improved method "off-center spin coating." The process remains experimental, and the engineers cannot yet precisely control the alignment of organic materials in their transistors, or achieve uniform carrier mobility.
Even at this stage, off-center spin coating produced transistors with a range of speeds far above those of previous organic semiconductors and comparable to the performance of the polysilicon materials used in today's high-end electronics.
The study has been published in the journal Nature Communications.
