Bending experiment on pentacene field-effect transistors on plastic films

Abstract

We have fabricated very flexible pentacene field-effect transistors with polyimide gate dielectric layers on plastic films with a mobility of $0.3{\mathrm{cm}}^2∕\mathrm{V}\mathrm{s}$ and an on/off ratio of ${10}^5$ , and have measured their electrical properties under various compressive and tensile strains while changing the bending radius of the base plastic films systematically. We have found that the change in source-drain current with bending radius is reproducible and reversible when the bending radius is above $4.6\mathrm{mm}$ , which corresponds to strains of $\sim 1.4\pm 0.1\%$ . Furthermore, the change in source-drain current does not depend on the direction of strain versus direction of current flow.