Natural resin shellac as a substrate and a dielectric layer for organic field-effect transistors

Abstract

Biocompatible and sustainable electronic-grade materials are integral for the development of electronics for biointegration and ‘use-and-throw’ applications. Herein we report the use of the natural resin shellac in organic field-effect transistors. Shellac was employed to cast robust and smooth substrates suitable for durable transistor devices. In addition shellac displays excellent insulating properties enabling its use as a high-quality dielectric layer for organic field-effect transistor (OFET) devices. We demonstrate that two common organic semiconductors, pentacene and C₆₀, show hysteresis-free operation in OFETs that employ shellac both as the substrate and as dielectric material. Shellac is a fully biocompatible (even edible) material that offers many advantages for OFET fabrication, including high dielectric breakdown fields, simple solution processing from ethanol solutions, and low temperature crosslinking at 50–70 °C. This work shows that shellac as a biomaterial can enable OFET applications where biocompatibility is necessary.