High performance electronic devices based on nanofibers via a crosslinking welding process.

Recently, metal oxide nanofibers fabricated by electrospinning have been considered as promising components for next-generation electronic devices. Unfortunately, the nanofiber-based electronic devices usually exhibited inferior electrical performance, due to the high contact resistance between the nanofibers and the inferior interfacial adhesion between the nanofibers and the substrate. In this report, an amine-hardened epoxy resin was selected as an adhesion agent to weld nanofiber junctions and improve the interfacial adhesion performance. It was confirmed that the physical properties of the nanofibers were greatly improved after the crosslinking welding process. Taking advantage of the welding process, field-effect transistors (FETs) based on In2O3 nanofiber networks (NFNs) with various nanofiber densities were integrated and investigated. It was found that the FETs based on In2O3 NFNs with a nanofiber density of 0.4 µm-1 exhibited the optimal electrical performance. When high-k ZrOx was integrated into the FETs as the dielectric layer, the FETs based on In2O3 NFNs/ZrOx exhibited superior performance, including a µFE of 13.2 cm2 V-1 s-1, an Ion/Ioff of 107, and an SS of 90 mV per decade. The crosslinking welding process is a simple, versatile and low-cost technique, which has great possibility for various applications.

Low-voltage and high-performance field-effect transistors based on ZnxSn1-xO nanofibers with a ZrOx dielectric.

One-dimensional (1D) nanofibers have been considered to be important building blocks for nano-electronics due to their superior physical and chemical properties. In this report, high-performance zinc tin oxide (ZnSnO) nanofibers with various composition ratios were prepared by electrospinning. The surface morphology, crystallinity, grain size distribution, and chemical composition of the nanofibers were investigated. Meanwhile, field-effect transistors (FETs) based on ZnSnO nanofiber networks (NFNs) with various composition ratios were integrated and investigated. For optimized Zn0.3Sn0.7O NFNs FETs, the device based on an SiO2 dielectric exhibited a high electrical performance, including a high on/off current ratio (Ion/off) of 2 × 107 and a field-effect mobility (µFE) of 0.17 cm2 V-1 s-1. When a high-permittivity (κ) ZrOx thin film was employed as the dielectric in Zn0.3Sn0.7O NFNs FETs, the operating voltage was substantially reduced and a high µFE of 7.8 cm2 V-1 s-1 was achieved. These results indicate that the Zn0.3Sn0.7O NFNs/ZrOx FETs exhibit great potency in low-cost and low-voltage devices.