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Analytical modeling of contact resistance in organic transistors

Conference Paper · October 2012

DOI: 10.1109/SMICND.2012.6400748

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Andreea Bonea Tomi Hassinen

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 ANALYTICAL MODELING OF CONTACT RESISTANCE IN
ORGANIC TRANSISTORS

A. Bonea1, T. Hassinen2, B.A. Ofrim1, D.C. Bonfert3, P. Svasta1

1
“Politehnica” University of Bucharest, Bucharest, Romania
E-mail: andreea.bonea@cetti.ro
2
VTT Technical Research Center of Finland, Espoo, Finland
3
Fraunhofer Research Institution for Modular Solid State Technologies, Munich, Germany

Abstract–Organic thin film transistors (OTFTs) are of
significant interest for the development of organic
electronics. The devices described in this paper, through
measurements, analytic extraction of parameters and
simulations, are organic transistor having
Polytriarylamine (PTAA) as semiconductor. This paper
refers to the determination of the source and drain
contact resistance of these PTAA organic transistors. The
MATLAB Simulink model is based on an analytic model,
for which DC Sweep and parametric simulations were
employed in order to obtain the total resistance. The
results are processed in accordance to the Transfer Line
Method (TLM). This mathematical method uses results on
the total channel resistance of the thin film transistors
with various channel lengths in order to extrapolate the
contact resistance. The TLM structures considered here
are bottom contact top gate OTFTs with interdigitated
electrodes of various channel lengths. The values of the
contact resistance are considered equal due to the
symmetry of the measured structure.
1. INTRODUCTION
Organic transistors have improved over the
past decade in terms of mobility and stability,
due to better fabrication techniques and new
organic compounds employed in their
realization. Still, the performances of OTFTs
are far from rivaling the performances of the
classical transistors, and this is partly due to
the fact that the conduction mechanism is not
properly controlled during the fabrication
process.
The contact effects are a result of defects at
the interface between the electrodes and the
semiconductor, often discussed in literature [1-
3]. They are influenced by the materials, as
source contacts, represents a particularly
relevant parameter of an organic transistor,
influencing its overall performance in terms of
conductance. Moreover, the adhesion to
substrate, particularly for bottom contacts
architecture needs to be taken into account.
It is necessary to realize better analytical
models in order to optimize these devices.
Given that the actual behavior of the OTFT is
still an actively researched topic, the
mathematical models which are developed for
calculation pose significant difficulties for
adapting to circuit simulators such as
MATLAB. Analytic models as well as finite
element models are presented in [4-7]. In this
paper, the model proposed is very basic, which
leads to increased flexibility. The fact that the
needed parameters are few proves it is
sufficient to match the physical equations to
measurements for a variety of geometric
layouts and materials.
2. MATHEMATICAL
CONSIDERATIONS
The OTFT model presented in this paper is
based on the classical MOSFET equation (1)
with parameters resulting from geometry and
material properties. Some of the relevant
parameters of the PTAA organic transistors
which were taken into account are the
threshold voltage, the gate oxide capacitance
and the mobility.
W
PC i VGS  VT V DSlin
well as deposition techniques, which affect the
I DSlin (1)
homogeneity of the structure. Therefore, the L
organic transistors exhibit low speed and
mobility, as consequence to the fact that the where W and L are the channel width and
contact resistance is high, and require high length respectively, Ci is the capacitance per
operation voltages. unit area of the gate insulator,  is the field
Therefore, the resistance, of both drains and effect mobility and VT is the threshold voltage.

978-1-4673-0738-3/12/$31.00 © 2012 IEEE

399
Other parameters could be taken into account
as described in [2].
The contact resistance can be modeled as a
linear resistance in series on both the drain and
the source resistances of the transistor, shown in
Fig. 1.
Fig. 1. Equivalent circuit of the organic transistor.
The total series resistance is proportional
to the channel length. The transfer line method,
described in [8] requires the variation of the
channel length, while the width is kept
constant. For each channel length the total
resistance, RON, versus length is plotted. The
characteristic is extrapolated to zero and the
intercept with the axis readily provides the
value for RS summed with RD. These two
resistances are considered equal due to layout
symmetry.
According to [3]:
§ ·
V DS ¨ 1 ¸
¨  RC ¸
ID ¨W ¸
¨ Ci P (VG  VT ¸
© L ¹
which represents the total resistance and can be
rewritten as:
RON Rch ( L)  Rc
where RC, is the sum of the source resistance
and the drain resistance, which are equal.
3. RESULTS FROM
MEASUREMENTS
Authors’ previous work [9] described the
realization and parameter extraction for
organic transistors with PTAA deposited onto
a Si gate, having as dielectric SiO2. In this
paper, the substrate is a flexible PEN foil.
Moreover, the dielectric D-139 Lisicon from
Merck is also organic. It should also be noted
that, while the polytriarylamine organic
semiconductor had poor adhesion on Si and
SiO2, exhibiting exfoliation, PTAA adheres
very well onto the plastic substrate. The S-D
electrodes are made from CrAu and Au is used
for the top gate electrode.
The layout designed within the FP7
FlexNet Consortium and realized at VTT
Finland can be observed in Fig. 2:
Fig. 2. Layout (a) and cross-section (b) of the
measured TLM structure.
Each two consecutive pads represent the
source and drain contacts for a transistor
structure with a 5m, 10m, 20m,
respectively 50m channel length and 1000m
channel width.
The output characteristic, presented in
Fig. 3, was obtained from measurements
performed with a Keithley 4200
Semiconductor Characterization System.
(2)
(3)
Fig. 3. Output characteristic of the TLM structure
from measurements for the four
channel lengths at Vg = -30V.
These values resulted from measuring the
four PTAA transistor structures with different
channel lengths and the same channel width.
The gate oxide capacitance per unit rea is
5.3F/cm2, with oxide thickness of 425nm and
the permittivity equal to 2.55. The thickness of
the gate electrode is 60nm, while the thickness
of the S-D electrodes is 110nm. The PTAA
layer has a thickness 80nm.
The electrical parameters were analytically
extracted. It resulted that the mobility for the
400
smallest channel length is approximately
0.002cm2/Vs, with a threshold voltage of -
0.8V, an ON\OFF ration of 70 and a
subthreshold swing of 13 V\decade.

4. SIMULATION RESULTS
Based on the measurements a transistor
model was created in MATLAB Simulink
which takes into account geometric and
material properties, as well as the channel
length variation. The simulation combines the Fig. 5. Output characteristics for MATLAB simulation.
linear DC sweep of the drain source voltage
with a parametric analysis, having the channel
length as a model parameter. The mobility
value is adjusted manually to obtain a better
fit. In Fig. 4 the model using PSpice
compatible blocks is shown.

Fig. 6. Contact resistance measurements vs. analytical

simulation with extrapolation at zero length,
according to (3).

Fig. 4. MATLAB measurement model.

Figuire 7 gives a zoomed representation of
Accurate models for electronic circuits can the contact resistance behavior at zero channel
be implemented in MATLAB in order to co- length.
simulate non-ideal electrical and physical
systems. For this simulation, physical to
Simulink converters were used and PSpice-like
models were netlisted. Similarly to the
measurements, there are four different channel
lengths and the same voltages.
The output characteristics in Fig. 5 are
obtained at a gate voltage of -30V, for each
channel length.
The MATLAB data has been exported to
Excel and the results were similar to the data
Fig. 7. Contact resistance analytical simulation with
from the measurements. In order to obtain the extrapolation at zero length.
contact resistance, the TLM analytical fitting
was performed onto the I-V data. From Fig. 7 one can also depict that the
Starting from the TLM measurements of contact resistance is dependent on the applied
Fig. 5, for L=5μm, expression (3) was VGS voltage. This behavior is represented in
computed for VDS=-30V and VGS = 0V, -10V, - Fig. 8.
20V and -30V. The computation was repeated
for the other channel length of 10μm, 20μm,
and 50μm. These results are represented in
Fig. 6.

401

Fig. 7. Contact resistance dependence on VG.
5. CONCLUSIONS
The paper presents the analytic parameter
extraction for PTAA organic transistors from
both measurements and MATLAB
simulations, directed towards determining the
contact resistance. The extraction of the
contact resistance is done under the
assumption that the drain and source
resistances are equal, in accordance to the
TLM method.
Moreover, the simulations show a good
match to measurement data, even though the
number of parameters taken into account is
reduced. Having a close model of the devices
is useful for determining optimal geometric
properties, such as oxide thickness, that would
reduce the values of the contact resistance. C-
V measurements could also give further
insight.
Acknowledgements–The results were
obtained in the frame of the FP7 FlexNet
Project and we wish to thank for the structures
made available within the FlexNet consortium.
The work has been funded by the Financial
Agreements POSDRU/88/1.5/S/60203 and
61187.
402
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