Printed Electrochemical Devices Using Conducting Polymers as Active Materials on Flexible Substrates

This paper reports some of our initial works in pursuit of a simple and low-cost method of fabricating all-organic electrochemical diodes, triodes, and transistors on flexible plastic or paper substrates. Conducting polymer poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene) poly(styrene sulfonate) (PEDOT : PSS), utilized as an active component, is deposited by spin-coating or printing techniques. The devices are directly fabricated from design without the need for masks, patterns, or dies. The output characteristics of both half-wave and full-wave rectifier circuits from two-terminal diodes show stable performances at frequencies below 5 Hz. In three-terminal tunable triodes, threshold voltage can be tuned in the range between 0.25 and 1.6 V. In four-terminal transistors, ambipolar operation function can be realized in one single device. I_ON/I_OFF current ratios of 10³-10⁴ have been achieved in the triode and transistor at operating voltages below 3 V. In addition, the device applications in electrochromic displays, logical circuits, as well as the switching speed of the circuits and device stability, are discussed.