Development of a Bipolar Organic Transistor – ScienceDaily

The invention of the transistor in 1947 by Shockley, Bardeen and Brattain at Bell Laboratories ushered in the era of microelectronics and revolutionized our lives. First, the so-called bipolar transistors were invented, in which negative and positive charge carriers contribute to the current transfer, and it was only later that unipolar field effect transistors were added. The increased performance due to the scaling of silicon electronics in the nanometer range has greatly accelerated data processing. However, this very stringent technology is less suitable for new types of flexible electronic components, such as rollable television screens or for medical applications on or even inside the body.

For such applications, transistors made of organic materials, i.e. carbon semiconductors, have come into focus in recent years. Organic field-effect transistors were introduced as early as 1986, but their performance still lags far behind that of silicon components.

A research group led by Professor Carl Liu and Dr Hans Kleimann at TU Dresden has succeeded for the first time to demonstrate a highly efficient organic bipolar transistor. The decisive factor in this was the use of fine, highly ordered organic layers. This new technology is several times faster than previous organic transistors, and for the first time the components reached operating frequencies in the gigahertz range, that is, more than a billion switching operations per second. Dr. Shu-Jen Wang, who co-led the project with Dr. Michael Sawatsky, explains: “Achieving the first bipolar organic transistor was a huge challenge, as we had to create very high quality layers and new structures. However, the excellent component standards rewarded these efforts! Professor Carl Liu adds: “We’ve been thinking about this device for 20 years and I’m glad we’ve now been able to prove it with our new high-order layers. The organic bipolar transistor and its possibilities open up completely new horizons for organic electronics, as they make the challenging tasks of data processing It is possible to transfer it. Imaginable future applications are, for example, smart patches with sensors that process sensor data locally and wirelessly and communicate with the outside.

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