[Abstract]

We report the fabrication of high-performance, printed, n-channel organic field-effect transistors (OFETs) based on an N,N-dialkyl-substituted-(1,7&1,6)-dicyanoperylene-3,4:9,10-bis(dicarboximide) derivative, PDI-RCN2, optimized by the solvent-vapor annealing (SVA) process. We performed a systematic study on the influence of solubility and the chemical structure of a solvent used for the SVA process on the ordering and orientation of PDI-RCN2 molecules in the thin film. The PDI-RCN2 film showed improved crystallinity under vapor annealing with the aliphatic 1,2-dichloroethane (DCE) as a marginal solvent. The n-type OFETs with DCE-vapor-annealed PDI-RCN2 show highly improved charge-carrier mobility of ∼0.5 cm2 V–1 s–1 and higher stability under gate bias stress than the pristine OFETs. This large performance improvement was mainly attributed to increased crystallinity of the semiconductor thin film, enhancing π–π stacking. We also introduced a new method to pattern crystallinity of a certain region in the semiconducting film by selective exposure to the solvent vapor using a shadow mask. The crystal-patterned PDI-RCN2 OFETs exhibit decreased off-currents by ∼10× and improved gate bias stability by minimizing crosstalk, reducing leakage current between devices, and reducing the density of charge trap states of the organic semiconductor.