Single crystal growth of organic semiconductors for field effect applications

Organic semiconductors attract considerable attention due to promising applications in organic light emitting diodes, field effect transistors, and organic solar cells. Moreover, solubility of some organic semiconductors in organic solvents favors them for printed large area OLED displays and inexpensive printed microelectronics. However, low mobility of carriers in organic semiconductors limits usability of organic semiconductors in integrated circuits and need to be overcome. For this reason, the knowledge of intrinsic properties achievable in very pure and perfect crystals is important. Therefore, we have carried out a program to grow high quality single crystals of organics. Solution growth, melt growth, solvothermal method and vapor transport crystal growth have been applied and will be reported. For research purpose, using a gas phase transport method, we have produced millimeter - sized crystals of numerous organic semiconductors with higher quality and purity. Structure quality has been evaluated by x-ray topography methods. Field effect transistors have been prepared on surfaces of single crystals. Some of organic semiconductors like rubrene, pentacene, copper phthalocyanine exhibit carrier mobilities comparable or even higher than amorphous silicon. However, characterization of starting materials, crystals, thin films and resulting devices remains the crucial issue. The relation between organic semiconductor properties, used device fabrication technologies and resulting device characteristics is the object of presented here studies.