Session: Physical Chemistry Poster:

Organic electrochemical transistors (OECTs) are emerging as key elements for sensing and transducing biological signals because of their general biocompatibility and high sensitivity. Traditionally, front-end processing functions on such biosensor systems are still performed by silicon-based integrated electronics. However, fabrication of silicon-based electronics usually involves high temperature processes not compatible with organic materials. This requires post fabrication integration resulting in reduced process flexibility and higher unit cost. All-organic bioelectronics could potentially resolve this issue by taking advantage of facile low-cost processing techniques, along with the wide synthetic tunability offered by organic materials.
An organic semiconductor which possesses, 1) balanced n- and p-type carrier mobilities 2) facile cation and anion transport properties 3) favorable frontier energy levels compared to the electrochemical window of aqueous electrolytes, can enable fabrication of n- and p-type OECTs for OECT based digital circuits. Diketopyrrolopyrrole (DPP) based conjugated polymers have shown high and balanced n- and p-type mobilities in organic field effect transistors suggesting the potential of these materials for OECT applications. Further, the electron deficient nature of the DPP-moiety ensures deep frontier energy levels making the material more suitable for both n- and p-type electrochemical doping in aqueous electrolytes compared to a number of reported OECT materials. Finally, functionalization with hydrophilic oligo-ethylene sidechains enables swelling with water and good ionic mobility in the polymer channel. Herein, we explore ambipolar OECT performance of a triethylene glycol functionalized DPP-based polymer. We discuss the performance metrics of ambiolar OECTs and their potential utility in single component CMOS-like OECT based logic.

Mr. Jibin J Samuel

PhD Student, Indian Institute of Science

Appearances