A significant self-heating effect in high-power high-speed organic field-effect transistor arrays

Abstract

Although the cut-off frequency of organic field-effect transistors (OFETs) has been significantly improved in recent years, the efficient fabrication of high-speed OFETs remains challenging. Moreover, there is a lack of research on the high power-induced self-heating effect during high-speed operation of OFET arrays, as well as corresponding thermal management. In this work, integrated multi-finger OFETs were fabricated by transferring pre-patterned electrodes onto large-area, high-mobility organic molecular monolayer crystals. Thanks to the efficient carrier injection, the OFETs showed a high cut-off frequency over 4 MHz and a maximum power up to 3.1 W. The self-heating effect of the integrated devices was observed to cause a temperature rise of up to 54 °C, leading to performance degradation. For thermal management, the application of more thermally conductive dielectrics can improve heat dissipation to the substrate and effectively reduce heating-induced performance degradation. This work proposes a promising method to fabricate high-speed OFET arrays and suggests a strategy for thermal management.