Polystyrene-block-poly(methylmethacrylate) composite material film as a gate dielectric for plastic thin-film transistor applications

We report a simple approach to fabricate an organic-inorganic hybrid gate insulator based n-type thin-film transistor (TFT) on a plastic polyimide (PI) sheet at room temperature using an appropriate composition of commercially available polymers and block copolymer surfactant. The composite material film namely; polystyrene-block-poly(methylmethacrylate) (PS-b-PMMA) is readily deposited as a gate dielectric with zinc oxide (ZnO) as a semiconductor layer. This new dielectric material film exhibits high surface energy, high air stability, very low leakage current density and better dielectric constant as compared to the conventional polymer dielectrics. This plastic ZnO-TFT combines the advantages of a high-mobility transparent inorganic semiconductor with an ultrathin high-capacitance and low-leakage PS-b-PMMA composite gate dielectric. Fourier transform infrared (FT-IR) spectrum analysis is used for the PS-b-PMMA film to confirm the presence of functional components in this composite material film. The contact angle measurements for three test liquids (e.g., distilled water, ethylene glycol and diiodomethane) reveal that the composite dielectric materials film is nearly hydrophobic and the calculated surface energy is 35.05 mJ m^-2. The resulting TFT exhibits excellent operating characteristics at V_DS = 10 V with a drain-source current on/off modulation ratio (I_on/I_off) of 3.12 × 10⁶ and a carrier mobility of 2.48 cm² V^-1 s^-1. Moreover in the bending mode and in a normal environment, the device remained undistorted and shows better reliability and performance, while the thickness of PS-b-PMMA is about 28 nm. The results have suggested a new and easy approach for achieving transparent and functionally bendable optoelectronics devices.