Modeling of physical and electrical characteristics of organic thin film transistors

The most studied and widely employed material for electronics is undoubtedly silicon. Its semiconductor properties and its associated costs make it an ideal candidate for most of the needs of today electronics. However, several different materials have been studied in the last years. In 1977, Alan J. Heeger, Alan G. MacDiarmid, and Hideki Shirakawa discovered a new, carbon based, highly-conductive polymer: the oxidized, iodine-doped polyacetylene. For their discovery, which was one of the most important milestones for organic electronics, they were jointly awarded the chemistry Nobel Prize in 2000. In this doctoral thesis, a theoretical framework for the electronics of organic transistors is developed. In chapter 2 an overview of the topic is presented: starting from the fundamental properties of the organic semiconductors, the chapter develops to provide a thorough analysis of the underlying physics and the electrical models which describe the behavior of organic thin film transistors. The next chapters describe models for organic thin film transistors with a cylindrical geometry, with short channel, and as a function of time. Chapter 6 concludes the doctoral thesis. The most important achievements and considerations are here summarized, and possible future activities on the topic are exposed.