Source-Gated Transistors for Versatile Large Area Electronic Circuit Design and Fabrication

Abstract

Source-gated transistors (SGTs) comprise a blocking contact or potential barrier at the source, which control the current. The paper describes how SGTs can be optimized for particular applications and for specific semiconductor material systems. It is shown how the saturation voltage can be designed to be an order of magnitude smaller than in equivalent FETs to give power savings of over 50% for the same current output. The SGT also achieves a better saturation regime, with lower output conductance over a larger range of drain voltages. Flat-panel lighting, remote sensing and signal processing and large-area circuits made using inexpensive but imprecise patterning techniques are some of the applications which could benefit from incorporating these devices.

Organic and printed process design kits: review, analysis and comparison

“…In respect of improvements of device characteristics, the source-gated transistors [165] configuration demonstrated the development of better performance devices based on silicon technology. The same approach was applied in organic devices with promising results [166], offering a lower voltage operation range than others while using the same materials.…”

New Opportunities for High‐Performance Source‐Gated Transistors Using Unconventional Materials

“…[ 33 , 34 , 35 , 36 ] By creating a Schottky source barrier between the source contact and the semiconductor, the drain current is dominated by the source barrier height rather than by the accumulated charge carriers in the TFT channel. This materials combination allows SGTs to achieve low power consumption, [ 37 , 38 ] high intrinsic gain, [ 39 , 40 ] high thermal/environmental/chemical stability, [ 41 ] reduced short‐channel effects, [ 42 ] and low saturation voltages. [ 43 ] While source‐gated effects were first applied in semiconducting hydrogenated amorphous silicon (a‐Si:H) devices, the recent emergence of high‐performance unconventional semiconducting materials such as oxides, organics, and 2D materials, when combined with the aforementioned attractions of SGT architectures, offer new opportunities for low‐power flexible/stretchable and/or optically transparent electronics, readily manufactured by solution/printing technologies.…”