Organic field emission device integrated with organic transistor

We report a potentially low-cost process which forms field emitters and transistors from organic materials at room temperature. By combining these two elements in series, a field emission structure is produced with reduced noise and low voltage control (approximately 20 V from full-on to full-off). All steps are accomplished entirely at room temperature without a micromachined gate structure. We show that noise is reduced from 37% root-mean-square without the integrated transistor controlling the current to 1.8% with the integrated transistor in high vacuum. Noise caused by gas exposure is reduced at pressures up to 10^-6 torr. This provides a new, potentially low-cost emitter and circuit architecture that controls field emitters without the use of a micromachined gate, which can be expensive to fabricate. This architecture also allows the control of high threshold field emission devices using low voltages.