Low-temperature fabrication of Pr-doped In2O3 electrospun nanofibers for flexible field-effect transistors

Abstract

Although metal oxide nanofibers (MO-NFs) based field-effect transistors (FETs) prepared by electrospinning have gained great attention, it is still challenging to develop MO-NFs directly on flexible substrates such as polyimide (PI) to achieve a high flexibility due to the high annealing temperature. In this work, using a UV pretreatment and a subsequent “combustion synthesis” process, high-quality Pr-doped In₂O₃ (InPrO) electrospun NFs were successfully fabricated on a flexible PI substrate at a relatively low temperature (380 °C). It was found that the InPrO-based flexible FET (f-FET) prepared by UV pretreatment and low annealing temperature not only has a good interfacial adhesion but also show a good flexibility. When the f-FET was wrapped around the rigid cylindrical rod with a radius of 5 mm, it exhibited good performance including a high μ_FE of 2.12  cm² V⁻¹ s⁻¹, a large I_on/I_off of ∼10⁸, and an excellent cycling stability (1000 bending cycles). This low-temperature processing route will certainly contribute to the future flexible electronics manufacturing.