IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ELECTRON DEVICES, VOL. 51, NO.
12, DECEMBER 2004
Effects of Grain Boundaries, Field-Dependent
Mobility, and Interface Trap States on the Electrical
Characteristics of Pentacene TFT
Alessandro Bolognesi, Marco Berliocchi, Maurizio Manenti, Aldo Di Carlo, Member, IEEE, Paolo Lugli,
Kamal Lmimouni, and Claude Dufour
Abstract—We have fabricated pentacene-based thin film tran-
sistors and analyzed their electrical properties with the help of
two-dimensional drift-diffusion simulations which favorably com-
pare with the experimental results. We have set up a model con-
sidering the polycrystalline nature of pentacene and the presence
of grains and grain boundaries. We show how this model can be
applied to different devices with different grain sizes and we ana-
lyze the relationship between mobility, grain size and applied gate
voltage. On the basis of the simulation results, we can introduce
an effective carrier mobility, which accounts for grain-related ef-
fects. The comparison between experimental results and simula-
tions allows us to clearly understand the differences in the mobility
derived by the analysis of current–voltage curve (as done exper-
imentally by using standard MOSFET theory) and the intrinsic
mobility of the organic layer. The effect of the pentacene/oxide in-
terface traps and fixed surface charges has also been considered.
The dependence of the threshold voltage on the density and energy
level of the trap states has been outlined.
Index Terms—Grain boundaries, mobility, pentacene, trapping.
I. INTRODUCTION
O RGANIC semiconductors are attracting increasing atten-
tion for the realization of organic light emitting diodes,
displays and organic thin-film transistors, (OTFTs) owing to
their low cost and flexibility properties. Currently, a large ef-
fort has been focused on the realization of circuits based on or-
ganic devices such as inverters, NAND gates and ring oscillators
[1]. The main limitation to a large exploitation of OTFTs comes
from their low mobility which is, at best, two or three orders
of magnitude lower than that of standard semiconductors. An-
other obstacle toward a wider utilization of organic materials
is the poor knowledge of the microscopic charge transport pro-
cesses, the nature of metal interface and the degradation mech-
anism that affect the device performances. The understanding
of charge transport mechanisms is of primary importance in the
development of organic devices and in the optimization of their
characteristics. It is generally accepted that charge transport in
Manuscript received January 12, 2004; revised May 10, 2004. The review of
this paper was arranged by Editor S. Datta.
A. Bolognesi, M. Berliocchi, M. Manenti, and A. Di Carlo are with the Dipar-
timento di Ingegneria Elettronica and INFM, Facoltà di Ingegneria, Università
di Roma “Tor Vergata,” Rome 00133, Italy (e-mail: dicarlo@ing.uniroma2.it).
P. Lugli is with the Institute for Nanoelectronics, Technical University of Mu-
nich, Munich D-80333, Germany.
K. Lmimouni and C. Dufour are with the Insitut d’Electronique, et de Mi-
croélectronic et de Nanotechnologies, University of Lille, Villenueve D’Ascq
Cédex 59652, France.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TED.2004.838333
0018-9383/04$20.00 © 2004 IEEE
1997
organic transistor occurs via hopping through localized states
[2], which results in a thermally activated mobility. Another im-
portant consequence of the hopping transport is that the mobility
increases with increasing field [3]. This field activation induces
unexpected phenomena. Usually, experimental results are inter-
preted in terms of analytical one-dimensional models similar to
those used for inorganic devices [4], [5]. These models correctly
predict the overall behavior of the device but they cannot de-
scribe the microscopic behavior of OTFTs and their peculiarity
with respect to conventional transistors, namely that 1) all mo-
bile charges are confined in a very thin accumulation layer (few
nanometers) of organic material at the interface with oxide; 2)
the low mobility induces space charge limited effects and; 3) the
electrical properties are strongly influenced by fixed charges and
trap states present at the interface between oxide and organic
semiconductor. In this respect, physical numerical simulations
are of great help in describing and predicting devices behavior.
Few attempts have been made in this direction. Alam et al. [6]
analyzed the behavior of -6T by using two-dimensional (2-D)
drift-diffusion simulations showing that under certain hypoth-
esis the electrical characteristics can be described by using stan-
dard tools developed for inorganic semiconductor. A 2-D model
has been used to describe the influence of the traps in the device
characteristics [7], [8], the behavior of top contact OTFTs [9],
[10] and the relation between channel formation and the nature
of contacts [11]. Even though these simulations have enhanced
the understanding of device behavior, many issues still need to
be investigated. In this paper, we will address the influence of
grain boundaries on the electrical characteristics of OTFTs and
the interplay between mobility model, trap states and interface
charge. As a reference, we will compare the electrical charac-
teristics of pentacene based OTFTs realized by our group with
those obtained from the numerical model.
II. OTFT FABRICATION
The OTFT was fabricated using a bottom contact configura-
tion. Source and drain multifinger contacts were prepared by
Cr–Au vacuum evaporation using a standard photo lithographic
process over thermally grown silicon dioxide substrates. The in-
terdigitated structure was chosen in order to have W/L of about
140 and a channel length of 12 m. After the contact deposi-
tion, we sublimated (in vacuum atmosphere, mbar) a thin
layer (about 30 nm at a deposition rate of 0.2 /s) of pentacene
1998 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ELECTRON DEVICES, VOL. 51, NO. 12, DECEMBER 2004

Fig. 1. AFM picture of the sample. Left panel, intensity; right panel, phase.

molecules as obtained from Sigma Aldrich without any purifi-

cation. The organic semiconductor was patterned by a shadow
mask in order to confine the channel region. The gate is repre-
sented by the high doped silicon ( cm ) on the top
of which silicon dioxide is grown. After deposition, a morpho-
logical investigation of the pentacene layer was performed by
atomic force microscopy (AFM) as shown in Fig. 1, the pen-
tacene grain size is about 0.1 m. The realized devices have
not been optimized to increase the grain size and to achieve
better electrical characteristics [12]. The reduced size of the
grain allows us to clearly emphasize the grain boundary effects
on the transport properties of the OTFT. A detailed discussion
and comparison between experiment and simulation for systems
with different grain size will be given elsewhere.
Characterization of the OTFT was obtained placing the Fig. 2. Output characteristics in vacuum environment for different gate
sample into a chamber connected to a rotative pump that 0 0
voltages between 10 and 40 V.
allowed us to measure the electrical characterstics in both air
and vacuum ( mbar). Current–voltage measurements were
carried out with an Agilent Semiconductor Parameter Analyzer
4155C connected to a probe station.
The vacuum output characteristics and the transfer character-
istics of the device are shown in Figs. 2 and in 3, respectively.
The / ratio for the device in vacuum are small while the
transistor has a threshold voltage of V By following a
standard procedure [13], a mobility value of the active layer can
be extracted from the output characteristics by using the equa-
tion

(1)

where is the channel width, is the channel length, is

the gate bias, is the threshold voltage and is the oxide
capacitance for unit of area. The mobility extrapolated with this
procedure applied to our device is cm /V s in Fig. 3. Transfer characteristics in vacuum for V = 030 V.
BOLOGNESI et al.: EFFECTS OF GRAIN BOUNDARIES, FIELD DEPENDENT MOBILITY, INTERFACE TRAP STATES
vacuum. We will show in Sections IV and V that such value rep-
resents an average mobility which may not be directly related to
the intrinsec mobility of the organic semiconductor. The height
of the metal–organic semiconductor barrier and the grain size
can strongly influence the mobility extracted in this way.
III. SIMULATION MODEL
The fabricated structure was simulated using the ISETCAD
software opportunely modified to consider the peculiarity of the
organic devices. The simulation tool is based on the solution of
the drift-diffusion equations coupled with Poisson equation
(2)
(3)
(4)
(5)
(6)
where is the electrostatic potential, is the electron (hole)
density, is the donors (acceptors) densities, is the
trapped hole density, is the electron (hole) current den-
sity, is the mobility, is the diffusion coefficient, and are
the generation and recombination rate, respectively. To describe
the charge transport in the organic devices we have to oppor-
tunely define: 1) pentacene grain size and density of traps at the
grain boundary; 2) charge mobility; 3) density of state; 4) band
alignment; and 5) trap model at the interface between pentacene
and oxide. In the following we will consider two different sim-
ulation frameworks. In the first framework (Section IV) we will
fully consider the grains explicitely, with an associated grain
boundary where traps are localized. In the second framework
(Section V) we will make use of an “effective” mobility which
accounts for the presence of the grains. Several models have
been proposed for the mobility-field reaction, ranging from con-
stant mobility model to a field activated mobility. We
have performed a Monte Carlo simulation [3] following the ap-
proach in [2] in order to determine both field and temperature
dependence of the mobility. We found that for fields lower than
V/cm the mobility can be well described by the equation
(7)
where is the low field mobility, and is a characteristic
parameter equal to V/cm. To underline the influence
of the mobility model on the electrical characteristics, we will
compare simulations made with such field dependent mobility
model against those performed with the constant mobility
model. For the temperature considered in this paper (300 K), all
the states are thermally accessible and we can set the effective
density of the states equal to the density of the molecules
[6] ( cm ). The usual values of pentacene level
structures [11] have been used (energy gap of 2.5 eV, ionization
potential of 5 eV, dielectric constant of 4.0). A work function
of 4.9 eV has been taken for the drain and source contacts to
reproduce the work function of gold and to account for the
injection efficiency of the contacts [14], [15]. In particular, the
contacts were modeled as Schottky barriers of 0.1-eV height in
1999
Fig. 4. Energy band structure of conducting channel in the neighborhood of
the grain boundaries.
order to account for the difference between the valence band of
the pentacene and the Fermi level of the metal [16]. A detailed
investigation on the influence of the metal–organic barrier
height on the electrical characteristics of OTFT can be found in
[16]. We consider only thermoionic emission over the contact
barrier thus neglecting tunneling mechanisms. The traps at the
interface between pentacene and oxide are modeled by using
single acceptor trap level (that is neutral if empty, positive if
occupied by an hole) at the interface between pentacene and
oxide [7]. Traps are characterized by their energy level and
concentration. Trapped hole density is related to occupation
probabilities for holes as follows:
(8)
where is the acceptor trap concentration and the hole
concentration of the acceptor trap level. In the following we
nominally assume an undoped organic semiconductor without
residual doping [11].
IV. GRAIN BOUNDARY MODEL
In order to fully exploit the fluctuation pattern of the grain
we should in principle perform three dimensional simulations.
However, to reduce the computational load, we consider two-di-
mensional simulations with an average grain size. The grains
are modeled as equally distributed regions along the pentacene
channel (this is possible because the conduction layer in organic
material is very thin, below 10 nm). At each grain boundary we
introduce a single trap level [17] with concentration and
energy . The traps are neutral if empty and positive if oc-
cupied by an hole [4]. In the following we use a field activated
intragrain mobility (7) with cm /V s which is a typ-
ical value for crystalline pentacene. In the following simulations
we also consider interface charges ( cm )
and trap states ( cm ) at the pentacene/SiO
interface. We will discuss in detail the pentacene/SiO inter-
face model in Section VI. The energy barrier present at each
boundary depends on the trapped carrier concentration, on the
gate voltage and on the trap concentration. In Fig. 4 we re-
port the energy band profile of the conducting channel in the
neighborhood of the grain boundaries for V and for
two different concentrations of trap states with the same energy
2000
Fig. 5. Comparison of the experimental transfer characteristics and simulation
result for different concentration of the traps at the grain boundaries.
Fig. 6. Dependence of the mobility on the gate voltages for different
dimensions of grain size obtained simulating a saturated device.
eV. The energy barrier varies from 0.25 eV for trap
concentration cm to 0.1 eV for trap concentra-
tion of cm . The value of the trap concentration at the
grain boundaries has a great influence on the electrical charac-
teristics of OTFTs. Fig. 5 shows the experimental transfer char-
acteristics (obtained for V) together with the re-
sults of simulations for different trap concentrations and with
a fix grain size of 0.1 m. We notice the good agreement ob-
tained for cm . The dependence of the
calculated OTFT mobility on grain size can be obtained again
from (1), following the same procedure used for experimental
results. In Fig. 6, the extracted mobility for different grain size
dimensions are compared with the mobility of a monocrystalline
device (in the simulation, this is obtained by choosing the grain
size equal to the channel length). We can notice that the mo-
bility for the crystalline device without grain shows a weak de-
pendence on the gate voltage, with a value very similar to low
field mobility used in the simulations ( cm /V s). At
decreasing grain dimensions the mobility shows a strong de-
pendence on the gate voltage and drops considerably. For the
device with 0.1 m grain size the “extracted” mobility is of the
order of cm /V s, that is three orders of magnitude lower
than the crystalline value. This behavior was also observed ex-
perimentally [18] and can be explained by considering that for
a small gate bias most of the charges are trapped. When the
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ELECTRON DEVICES, VOL. 51, NO. 12, DECEMBER 2004
Fig. 7. Comparison between experimental and simulated output
characteristics for several gate voltages. Here, we use the field dependent
mobility model, (7), with  = 3:3 2 10 cm /V1s.
gate bias becomes more negative, the Fermi level shifts toward
the valence band and eventually all trap states become filled. In
this situation the effect of traps vanishes and the mobility re-
mains constant with gate bias (in Fig. 6 this effect is only vis-
ible for the 1- m grains, but occurs also for the other films for
V). In conclusion, we observed that the mobility in
organic field effect transistors is given by two components: one
related to intragrain transport, with a high value similar to that
of crystalline pentacene, and another much lower one, related
to the intergrain transport and affected by the grain boundaries.
The latter contribution is responsible for the low mobility of the
devices. These results are consistent with an equivalent circuit
model [19] where the channel is composed by grains of size
with mobility and grain boundaries of size with mo-
bility . With this assumption the overal effective mobility
is given by [20]
(9)
Recalling that increases with gate voltage, (9) states that
for small is controlled by and therefore it increases
with . Otherwise for large , (9) can be approximated with
, which becomes independent from gate voltage.
V. EFFECTIVE MOBILITY MODEL
Following (9), we consider an equivalent model in which
grains and grain boundaries are represented by an effective low
field mobility derived from the full simulation described above.
Since a good agreement with experimental results has been ob-
tained when the grain size is 0.1 m (see Fig. 5), for the low
field effective mobility we can choose from Fig. 6 a value of
cm /Vs. The use of such effective value [together
with the electric field dependence given by (7)] leads to the per-
fect agreement with the experimental data shown in Fig. 7. Also
in this case we use the same pentacene/SiO interface model of
Section IV (see Section VI for a discussion).
It seems puzzling that the optimal value for the effective low
field mobility is about 20% lower than the one extracted di-
rectly from the experiment through (1), namely
BOLOGNESI et al.: EFFECTS OF GRAIN BOUNDARIES, FIELD DEPENDENT MOBILITY, INTERFACE TRAP STATES
Fig. 8. Comparison between experimental and simulated (with constant
mobility model) output conductance for several gate voltages. The simulations
refer to a constant mobility model with  = 4 2 10 cm /V1s as extracted
from experimental data.
cm /V s. The reason for the disagreement is that the latter value
is extracted under the implicit hypothesis of constant mobility.
Such hypothesis clearly fails at large V when the
electric field in the device is very high.
Indeed, if we run our simulation using a constant mobility
( cm /Vs), we obtain an overestimation
of the drain current for low drain voltages ( V)
as reported in Fig. 8, where we compare the simulated output
conductance with the experimental one for several gate voltages.
In a previous work [16] we have estimated the magnitude
of the error in the determination of the low field mobility via
(1), showing that this error depends on the barrier height of
drain/source contacts with organic material.
We may conclude this part observing that experimental re-
sults can be interpreted in term of two compatible models, the
grain boundary model and the effective mobility model. While
the grain boundary model can be applied to different devices
with different grain sizes, the effective mobility model can only
be used for a given device once the low field effective mobility
value has been determined.
VI. PENTACENE/SIO INTERFACE MODEL
In this section we analyze the effects of trap states and fixed
charges at the interface between pentacene and SiO using
the effective mobility model. The same consideration could be
applied to grain boundary model, however the computational
cost is much higher. The presence of traps and surface states
can strongly affect the electrical characteristics in organic films,
and in general the performance of OTFTs. In particular, traps
present at the interface between oxide and pentacene can influ-
ence the transistor transfer characteristics in the subthreshold
region, while fixed charges present at the interface determine
its threshold voltage [7]. First we simulate the behavior of
transfer characteristics considering only interface charges,
without introducing interface trap states. From the analysis of
the transfer characteristics of Fig. 3 a value V can be
estimated for the threshold voltage of our OTFT. The threshold
2001
Fig. 9. Threshold voltage calculated from simulations as a function of fixed
surface charge.
voltage can change due to the presence of fixed charges at the
interface according to the relation [21]
(10)
where is the threshold voltage shift, is the interface
charge, and is the oxide capacitance for unit of area. Several
interface charge concentrations have been considered in the sim-
ulation, and in Fig. 9 the threshold voltage calculated from simu-
lation as a function of fixed surface charges is represented. Now
we see that (10) is verified and the increase of the (negative)
fixed charges tends to shift the threshold voltage toward posi-
tive values. By comparison with the experiment, we can assume
a fixed charge concentration of cm for
the device. From Fig. 9, it is clear that subthreshold character-
istics cannot be fitted simply by introducing interface charges.
We have therefore consider esplicitely the influence of inter-
face traps. Mobile charges which are trapped at the interface
form a capacity in parallel with the capacity of the depletion
region [7] thus deeply affecting the subthreshold transcharac-
teristic slope. In particular by increasing the acceptor trap con-
centration the subthreshold transcharacteristic slope decreases.
In the following we will consider a single acceptor trap level in-
side the forbidden band and we will analyze its effects varying
both the concentration and the distance of the level from the va-
lence band. In Fig. 10 we report the transcharacteristics obtained
for V and for several trap concentrations. Here we
choose a eV above the valence band. We notice that
the effect of the traps appears only on the subthreshold region,
where it indered the closing of the channel. The dependence of
the transcharacteristic on the trap level is reported in Fig. 11.
Here we choose a trap concentration of cm .
As expected, by increasing the distance of the trap level from the
valence band, the overall effect is reduced up to eV
where traps have no more influence. From the simulation data
we conclude that traps are properly represented by a single level
with energy equal to 0.15 eV with respect to the valence band
and with a concentration of cm . With such values
for the traps and for the surface charges concentration we obtain
an almost perfect agreement with the experimental data. This is
2002 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ELECTRON DEVICES, VOL. 51, NO. 12, DECEMBER 2004

for the pentacene taking into account its polycrystalline nature

represented by grains and grain boundaries. We have calculated
the energy barrier at the grain boundaries and shown how this
barrier is related to gate bias and trap concentration. Further-
more we have simulated the electrical characteristics of OTFTs
clarifying the dependence of the mobility from gate bias and
grain size. We have then introduced an effective model based
on an effective mobility, which is able to reproduce faithfully
the experimental characteristics. We have shown, based on ex-
perimental data and simulation results, how extraction of the
equivalent mobility from output characteristics of OTFT using
standard MOSFET theory leads to uncorrected results. This is
related to the strong field-dependence of the mobility and on
the blocking properties of the drain/source contacts. Trap states
Fig. 10. Transcharacteristics obtained for V 0
= 30 V and for several and interface states have been considered in the model, leading
concentrations of the traps states. The level is E = 0:15 eV above the valence
band.
to the determination of the trap level energy and trap density
characteristic of the examined transistor.

Fig. 11. Transcharacteristics obtained for V 0
= 30 V and for several
2
energies of the trap level. The concentration is N = 1 10 cm .
Fig. 12. Comparison of the experimental transfer characteristics and
simulation result for two different drain voltages, V =
30 V and
V 0
= 8 V.
shown in Fig. 12 where are plotted the experimental and simu-
lated trans characteristics for both devices.
VII. CONCLUSION
A set of pentacene TFTs has been realized and characterized.
Subsequently a charge transport model has been implemented
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Alessandro Bolognesi received the degree in elec-
tronics engineering (with honors) from the Università
di Roma “Tor Vergata,” Rome, Italy in 2001, where
he is pursuing the Ph.D. degree in microelectronics
and telecommunications.
He is working on developing models for charge
transport in organic materials and in OTFTs. More-
over, during the last year, he started to study and de-
velop RFID systems.
Marco Berliocchi received the degree (with honors)
in telecommunication engineering, the M.S. degree
in management engineering, and the Ph.D. degree
in Ingegneria dei Sistemi sensoriali e di Apprendi-
mento, from the Università di Roma “Tor Vergata,”
Rome, Italy, in 2000, 2002, and 2003, respectively.
He received the Doctorat en Microondes et Mi-
crotechnologie from the Istitute d’Électronique de
Microélectronique et de Nanotechnologie, Univer-
sité des Sciences et Technologies de Lille, Lille,
France, in 2003.
His primary activity at the Università di Roma concerns the study and the
technological realization of organic material-based devices. His further research
work involves the study and the realization of RFID systems.
Maurizio Manenti received the degree in electronics
engineering with the thesis Simulation of quantum
cascade lasers, the M.S. degree in management engi-
neering, and the Ph.D. degree in microelectronics and
telecommunications, all from the Università di Roma
“Tor Vergata,” Rome, Italy, in 2000, 2002, and 2003,
respectively.
His research activity at the Università di Roma
concerns optoelectronics devices, RFID systems,
and organic electronics.
2003
Aldo Di Carlo (M’00) received the degree in physics
from the Università di Roma “Tor Vergata,” Rome,
Italy, in 1991 and the Ph.D. degree from the Walter
Schottky Institute of the Technical University, Mu-
nich, Germany, in 1995.
He is currently an Associate Professor at the Elec-
tronics Engineering Department at the Università di
Roma. His work is mainly focused on the study of
optical and transport processes in nanostructured de-
vices.
Paolo Lugli received the degree in physics from the
University of Modena, Modena, Italy, in 1979, and
the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees, both in electrical engi-
neering from Colorado State University, Fort Collins,
in 1982 and 1985, respectively.
In 1985, he joined the Physics Department, Univer-
sity of Modena, as a Research Associate. From 1988
to 1993, he was Associate Professor of solid state
physics, Università di Roma “Tor Vergata,” Rome,
Italy. In 1993 he was appointed a Full Professor of op-
toelectronics. In 2003 he joined the Technical Univer-
sity of Munich, Munich, Germany, where he was appointed Head of the newly
created Institute for Nanoelectronics. He is author of more than 250 scientific
papers.
Kamal Lmimouni received the D.E.A. degree in
electronics from the University of Science and Tech-
nology, Villenueve D’Ascq Cédex, Lille, France, and
the Ph.D. degree from the Institute of Electronics
Microelectronics and Nanotechnology (IEMN),
Lille, in 1997.
After completing his postgraduate work, he took
a three years post-doctoral fellowship in the Organic
Molecular Materials and Devices Team in the same
institute. In September 2001, he joined the IEEA De-
partment, University of Lille, where he is currently a
Lecturer. His research interests include the study of the electrical and optical
properties of organics materials, fabrication, and characterization of organic
light-emitting diodes and field effect transistors. He participates in the super-
vision of two Ph.D. students and he is the coauthor of over 30 papers in referred
journals and conference proceedings.
Claude Dufour received the M.S. degree and the
Ph.D. degree in spectroscopy from the University
of Lille, Villenueve D’Ascq Cédex, Lille, France, in
1969 and 1978, respectively.
From 1969 to 1996, he studied the spectra of var-
ious components of diatomic molecules and tranfers
between rotational energy levels in excited states of
molecules by collision with a buffer gas. In 1996, he
joined the Institut d’Electronique, Microelectronique
et Nanotechnologies, University of Lille. His present
studies are in conducting polymers, including con-
ductivity, photoluminescence, and electroluninescence. He is also interested in
the application of conducting polymers in smart textiles.