Rational Design of Amorphous Indium Zinc Oxide/Carbon Nanotube Hybrid Film for Unique Performance Transistors

Here we report unique performance transistors based on sol-gel processed indium zinc oxide/single-walled carbon nanotube (SWNT) composite thin films. In the composite, SWNTs provide fast tracks for carrier transport to significantly improve the apparent field effect mobility. Specifically, the composite thin film transistors with SWNT weight concentrations in the range of 0-2 wt % have been investigated with the field effect mobility reaching as high as 140 cm(2)/V·s at 1 wt % SWNTs while maintaining a high on/off ratio ∼10(7). Furthermore, the introduction SWNTs into the composite thin film render excellent mechanical flexibility for flexible electronics. The dynamic loading test presents evidently superior mechanical stability with only 17% variation at a bending radius as small as 700 μm, and the repeated bending test shows only 8% normalized resistance variation after 300 cycles of folding and unfolding, demonstrating enormous improvement over the basic amorphous indium zinc oxide thin film. The results provide an important advance toward high-performance flexible electronics applications.