Direct patterned zinc-tin-oxide for solution-processed thin-film transistors and complementary inverter through electrohydrodynamic jet printing

The solution-processed deposition of metal-oxide semiconducting materials enables the fabrication of large-area and low-cost electronic devices by using printing technologies. Additionally, the simple patterning process of these types of materials become an important issue, as it can simplify the cost and process of fabricating electronics such as thin-film transistors (TFTs). In this study, using the electrohydrodynamic (EHD) jet printing technique, we fabricated directly patterned zinc-tin-oxide (ZTO) semiconductors as the active layers of TFTs. The straight lines of ZTO semiconductors were successfully drawn using a highly soluble and homogeneous solution that comprises zinc acrylate and tin-chloride precursors. Besides, we found the optimum condition for the fabrication of ZTO oxide layers by analyzing the thermal effect in processing. Using the optimized condition, the resulting devices exhibited satisfactory TFT characteristics with conventional electrodes and conducting materials. Furthermore, these metal-oxide TFTs were successfully applied to complementary inverter with conventional p-type organic semiconductor-based TFT, showing high quality of voltage transfer characteristics. Thus, these printed ZTO TFT results demonstrated that solution processable metal-oxide transistors are promising for the realization of a more sustainable and printable next-generation industrial technology.