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Organic Field Effect Transistors for Textile Applications

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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY IN BIOMEDICINE, VOL. 9, NO. 3, SEPTEMBER 2005 319

Organic Field Effect Transistors

for Textile Applications
Annalisa Bonfiglio, Danilo De Rossi, Tünde Kirstein, Ivo R. Locher, Fulvia Mameli, Rita Paradiso, and
Giovanni Vozzi

Abstract—In this paper, several issues concerning the devel- such textiles, will allow the design and production of a new
opment of textiles endowed with electronic functions will be generation of garments with distributed sensors and electronic
discussed. In particular, issues concerning materials, structures, functions. The integration of electronic and electromechanical
electronic models, and the mechanical constraints due to textile
technologies will be detailed. The idea starts from an already systems onto substrates which are not only flexible, but ideally
developed organic field-effect transistor that is realized on a conformable to the human body represents a breakthrough in
flexible film that can be applied, after the assembly, on whatever various areas of application and opens new ways in man–ma-
kind of substrate, in particular, on textiles. This could pave the chine interface technology.
way to a variety of applications aimed to conjugate the favorable The issues concerning the development of a textile endowed
mechanical properties of textiles with the electronic functions of
transistors. Furthermore, a possible perspective for the develop- with electronic functions are indeed very complicate and need a
ments of organic sensors based on this structure are described. deepening under several aspects, namely, materials to employ,
technologies, structures, electronic models, and also compati-
Index Terms—E-textiles, organic semiconductors, organic thin
film transistors. bility of the proposed electronic structures with textile technolo-
gies. Clearly, the first functions to implement are switching and
amplification, in one word, the transistor function. This is of par-
I. INTRODUCTION ticular importance, both because it is the basic block of more
complicated electronic circuits and because many other func-
I N THE LAST few years, “wearable electronics” has become
one of the hottest themes in electronics and there are indica-
tions that this topic signals the first step of the next electronic
tions (like field-effect based sensors) can be derived from this
one.
revolution. But what does “wearable” mean? And which are the Organic devices, in particular light-emitting diodes (LEDs)
future directions that this field will take? and field effect transistors have been the focus of an intense
There are several ways to interpret this issue: “wearable” can research work carried on during the last 15 years [1] that has
refer to devices and systems that, due to their small size, can given only recently the first examples of commercial products.1
be embedded on a textile substrate; or “wearable” can be a de- Organic semiconductors are very interesting materials, as they,
vice or a system that is a textile itself. For sure, this last con- on one hand, show good semiconductor properties, and, on the
cept is much more challenging and can only be developed on other hand, have the mechanical properties of polymers. Due to
a longer timescale than the first, but it paves the way for a real these reasons, the perspective of flexible electronics seems now
revolution both in the technical and socioeconomic fields. As very close, as also demonstrated by a recently proposed idea
a consequence, E-textiles will have the revolutionary ability to of “transistor in a fiber” [2]. Recently [3], a special structure
sense, act, store, emit, and move while leveraging an existing has been proposed that fully exploits the mechanical properties
low-cost textile manufacturing infrastructure. At the same time, of organic semiconductors. It is based on a completely flexible
systems based on flexible and smart technologies conformable and transparent polyester film that, on one hand, is the insulator
to the human body will help to improve the autonomy and the layer of the field-effect transitor (FET) structure, and, on the
quality of life of people. The use of “intelligent” materials, as other hand, is the mechanical support of the whole structure.
Basing on this initial idea, we have developed a fiber realized
by glueing this structure on a textile ribbon, in order to obtain a
Manuscript received May 13, 2004; revised April 25, 2005 and May 26, 2005. flexible yarn that could be employed in a textile process.
This work was supported in part by the Future and Emerging Technologies In this paper, we address several points which altogether will
(FET) Action of the V Framework Programme of the European Community and contribute to the final goal: materials and technologies which
in part by the Swiss Federal Office for Education and Science (BBW) under the
ARIANNE Project. are best suitable to obtain such yarns; the electronic model of
A. Bonfiglio is with the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, the yarn, seen as a “textile transistor;” the electronic model of
University of Cagliari, 09123 Cagliari, Italy (e-mail: annalisa@[Link]). the fabric, to evaluate its possible distributed digital or analog
D. De Rossi and G. Vozzi are with the Interdepartmental Research Centre
“E. Piaggio,” University of Pisa, Pisa 56126, Italy. functions depending on the topology of the yarns; and the me-
T. Kirstein and I. R. Locher are with the Wearable Computing Laboratory, chanical constraints that must be considered in order to obtain a
Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Zurich, CH-8092, Switzerland. textile component, suitable to be processed by means of textile
F. Mameli was with the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering,
University of Cagliari, 09123 Cagliari, Italy. She is now with ECOS, Cagliari technologies. In this work, we will address each issue, and show
09100, Italy. the main results.
R. Paradiso is with Smartex s.r.l., Navacchio 56023, Italy.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TITB.2005.854515 1[Online] Available: [Link]

1089-7771/$20.00 © 2005 IEEE

320 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY IN BIOMEDICINE, VOL. 9, NO. 3, SEPTEMBER 2005

a real textile. Of course, this arrangement is far from being op-

timal under the point of view of the metal–semiconductor con-
tacts. In the section dedicated to results we will comment about
the observed behavior and compare this case with the behavior
of devices with thermally evaporated contacts.

B. Materials for Textile Transistors

As shown, a TFT independently of its geometry is made by
three main layers: the insulator, the gate metal, and the organic
semiconductor.
The insulating layer must have a proper dielectric constant
(for comparison, the value for silicon oxide is 3.9) and should
be as thin as possible (in order to ensure a suitable value of the
dielectric capacitance per unit area). In addition, it must have
Fig. 1. (a) General scheme of a top contact thin film transistor. (b) Structure mechanical properties similar to fabric, in order to allow the
adopted for the device on a textile ribbon. The gate is the metal layer deposited
on the insulating film and glued to the textile ribbon. Source and drain are metal possibility of bending and stretching as it is necessary during
(gold) wires that cross the ribbon in fixed positions. a weaving process.
For these reasons we selected Mylar (commercial trademark
II. PROBLEM DESCRIPTION AND METHODS for poly-ethylene therephtalate film, produced by Du Pont) as a
material that perfectly fulfills the previous requirements. It has a
A textile structure has very strict mechanical constraints,
dielectric constant of 3.0, a minimum thickness of 900 nm, and
therefore, the choice of materials is crucial for obtaining a
it is completely flexible, more than a fabric ribbon.
suitable device. Traditional inorganic crystalline materials,
The gate metal layer must be a conductive layer, typically a
as silicon, do not have the requested features. Organic semi-
metal or an organic conductor. There is no particular require-
conductors (polymers and oligomers), having the electrical
ment for this layer, and then gold or aluminum layers can be
properties of semiconductors and the mechanical properties of
thermally evaporated or alternatively, PEDOT:PSS [Poly(3,4-
plastics, are good candidates for realizing flexible transistors,
ethylenedioxythiophene):poly(styrene sulfonate)] layers can be
suitable to be transferred on unconventional substrates as
spin-coated on Mylar.
textiles.
As semiconductor layer, many organic semiconductor mate-
Transistors based on organic semiconductor are a special
rials with high charge mobility can be used to realize the device.
type of field effect transistors, named thin-film transistors
Unfortunately, they are not always easily processable materials
(TFTs): source and drain are simply ohmic contacts formed by
and sometimes need complex and expensive deposition tech-
a metal (that could be substituted by a conductive polymer) on
niques [4], [5]. Usually, conductive polymers are also poorly
the organic semiconductor while the channel between source
processable materials, but the synthesis of new monomers yields
and drain is formed through a charge accumulation induced by
soluble materials in common organic solvents. Synthesis of re-
the gate.
gioregular poly-3-alkyl-thiophenes using the method developed
As stated in the introduction, a completely flexible structure
by Collough et al. overcomes this problem enhancing conjuga-
assembled starting from a transparent insulating film has been
tion between thiophene rings; a better ordering in the solid state
realized that seems to be the ideal candidate for realizing a tex-
occurs [6], [7].
tile transistor [3]. In fact, the whole procedure for obtaining such
In our experiments, we used three different semicon-
structure [shown in Fig. 1(a)] is realized without inserting a sub-
ducting polymers, namely regioregular poly-3-exil-thiophene
strate whose mechanical properties limit the flexibility of the
(supplied by Sigma-Aldrich, Milano), regioregular 3.3 -di-
whole structure. In this way, the substrate can be added to the
docel-2,2 :5, 2 -terthiophene [8] (supplied by Prof. M. C.
structure only after its assembly, therefore allowing to employ
Gallazzi, Politecnico di Milano, Milan, Italy) and Pentacene
unconventional substrates as paper, three-dimensional surfaces,
(Sigma Aldrich, Milano, Milal, Italy).
and textiles.
The first two polymers were deposited by casting from
A. Structure of Textile Transistors concentrated solutions of polymers in pure chloroform and
in chlorobenzene, at a concentration in the range 0.8%–0.5%
For realizing the electronic ribbon, the insulating film was
weight, the last instead was deposited by thermal evaporation.
metal covered (by a thermal evaporation of gold) on one side,
and a thin film (some tens of nanometers) of organic semicon-
ductor was deposited on the opposite side. The film was then C. Electronic Model of Textile Transistors
glued to the textile ribbon as shown in Fig. 1(b). To obtain the As can be seen in Fig. 1, in the TFT structure the gate is elec-
complete transistor structure, source and drain contacts were trically insulated from the organic semiconductor (as in all FET
created by simply crossing the ribbon with two parallel gold structures) and the source and drain contacts are simply ohmic
wires kept at a fixed distance of about 100 m (a distance com- (differently than most FET structures). Differently than in sil-
patible with most textile processes). In this way, we have simu- icon MOSFETs, in such device, an inversion channel does not
lated the electrical contacts existing between yarns of a mesh of form. As source and drain are ohmic contacts, the channel is
BONFIGLIO et al.: ORGANIC FIELD EFFECT TRANSISTORS FOR TEXTILE APPLICATIONS 321

confined to the surface of the semiconductor where majority car-

riers (generally holes) accumulate due to the field effect induced
by the gate. Therefore, the TFT is an accumulation device. This
also means that a small current can flow even when an accumu-
lation layer is not formed (OFF state) but this current is very
low because of the intrinsic low conductivity of the organic ma-
terials. The equations that describe the behavior of an organic
TFT can be directly derived from those of inorganic FETs pro-
viding to consider that the off TFT (OTFT) is an accumulation
device. For a TFT, the relations that link the current to the
applied voltages are

in the linear region and

in the saturation region. and are, respectively, width and

length of the channel, is the carrier mobility, the insulating Fig. 2. Transistor array structure. GS represents textile ribbons with the gate
layer capacitance (per area unit), and are, respectively, contact and the organic semiconductor.
the gate and the threshold voltages, and is the drain voltage.
The threshold voltage is the value of gate voltage necessary to
increase the conductivity of the surface channel with respect
to the rest of the semiconductor (for low values of the drain
voltage).

D. Yarn Topology of the Electronic Fabric Model

Building reliable transistors with well-defined electrical
properties using conductive and semiconductive yarns implies
small and stable geometrical structures of the fabric and within
the fabric. Therefore, a woven structure emerges as a possible
manufacturing technology since the smallest mesh lies in the
range of 100 m by weaving single fiber and since it is more
rigid compared to a knitted structure.
For simplicity, a polymer transistor can be regarded as a Fig. 3. Example of a ring oscillator structure. This structure implies
P-MOS FET at a first stage. Therefore, when inserted in a the implementation of different conductivity properties (insulating, metal,
semiconductor) on the same yarn.
fabric, this can be seen as a elementary network where “drain”
(D) and “source” (S) are purely metallic wires that cross the
yarn-like transistor indicated with “gate” (G) (Fig. 2). Since Since distances between transistors can be large, manufacturing
reliable connections of electrical contacts among threads methods for section-wise plating need not to be precise.
seem difficult to achieve due to the drapability of textiles and
mechanical stresses, redundancy by parallel connection of E. Mechanical Constraints for Textile Structures
transistors improves functionality. Textile industries have used metal yarns for years. Usually a
A structure as that shown in Fig. 2 cannot provide di- single metal fiber is avoided, because of problems due to flexi-
verse electrical functions since the transistors are arranged in bility, resistance to stretching and friction, lower than other nat-
columns. Connecting transistors between different columns ural or artificial yarns, preventing its use with standard weaving
would lead to shorts of the drains and sources because they machines. Possible solutions are: 1) production of a yarn with a
are metallic. To our knowledge, applications of such an array core made of common textile yarn and with spiralled metal fil-
mainly lie in the sensing field where external interferences ament; 2) use of pure metal yarns made of several metal fibers,
partially change the electrical characteristics of the textile prepared as long filaments or from staples; 3) a yarn made by
since polymer transistor are rather sensitive to geometrical, twisting metal fibers around a filament or a previous spun yarn,
temperature or even light variations. thus concealing the core.
In order to establish a self-contained device within the textile, With these techniques, metal yarns can be used with com-
piecewise conductivity and nonconductivity of threads are nec- mercial weaving machines and have technical properties com-
essary avoiding shorts, multiple excitations of transistor gates parable with traditional yarns. It must be underlined that a new
and unwanted parallel connection of transistors. Fig. 3 shows a trend is observable in textile domain, as indicated by the produc-
section of such a circuit in the case of a ring oscillator structure. tion of several new circular knitting machineries able to process
322 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY IN BIOMEDICINE, VOL. 9, NO. 3, SEPTEMBER 2005

TABLE I
MECHANICAL SPECIFICATION OF RIBBON

Fig. 5. I –V curve of the ribbon structure obtained with an organic layed

made with pentacene.

III. RESULTS
We have characterized the “electronic ribbon” as a single
transistor. In Fig. 5, the – (drain current versus drain
voltage) curve of the device is shown. A clear field effect can
be observed even if the recorded current values are very low.
Several reason can be invoked to justify this behavior. First, as
shown in (1)-(2), the current intensity depends on the aspect
ratio . In the case of the ribbon structure, this ratio was
very low (with in the order of 100 m, and of about 4 mm,
the nominal ratio did not exceed 40. In most devices reported
in literature, this ratio generally varies from some hundreds to
thousands). Furthermore, the source and drain contacts were
made by simply crossing the ribbon with two parallel gold
wires, as shown in Fig. 1. Therefore, the contact between metal
and the organic semiconductor was not so intimate as it is
normally obtained with evaporated contacts, so the real value of
the aspect ratio was probably even smaller. But the geometry is
not the only reason of the low value of currents. It must be said
Fig. 4. Scheme of woven fabric on top and knitted fabric on bottom. Knitting that corresponding structures obtained with the same organic
is another possible textile assembly technique that could give rise to furhter
topological configurations of yarns. semiconductor, same geometry of the contacts, but thermally
evaporated source and drain contacts, currently gives currents
of the order of several tens of microamps. Therefore, it seems
pure metallic and technical yarns. A valuable alternative is to that a key factor for obtaining a good transistor behavior is the
employ a textile ribbon that can be knitted or woven like a yarn. quality of metal–semiconductor contacts. This affects not only
As an example, a ribbon can be used as substrate of a transistor the real geometry of contacts, but also the height of the energy
made on an insulating film with a width (average) of 3.5 mm: barrier for hole injection that exists at the junction. A high
technical details are described in Table I. injection barrier reflects in a resistive component in series with
Ribbons can be processed by means of two fabric weaving the channel that decreases the effective voltage across the
processes in order to realize woven fabric and knitted fabric. channel, by an amount of . This contribution is present
Woven fabrics are generally composed with two sets of yarns, also in devices with thermally evaporated contacts, and this
made by interlacing them at right angles. The knitted fabric is issue has been largely discussed, even if not definitely clarified,
made by interlocking series of loops of one or more yarns, a in many papers [9]–[15]. Usual values of can also exceed
scheme of both the fabric is shown in Fig. 4. values of mega-ohms. In this case, it is likely that the imperfect
The fundamental difference in topology between these two contact between metal and organic semiconductor, gives rise to
processes is that for the woven fabric the yarns are organized in values some orders of magnitude higher and this can give a
a network scheme, while for the knitted fabric there is only a reasonable explanation of the observed low values of current.
continuous yarn that is running up and down on weft direction. So, it seems that the optimization of the metal-semiconductor
Of course, such differences in topology reflect on the global interface is the crucial problem to solve in order to obtain reli-
properties of the fabric in terms of elastic properties but, in able results with this structure. To improve the contacts, without
case of a ribbon with electronic properties, also on the global renouncing to the idea of a yarn mesh, it is necessary to ensure
“transfer function” of the fabric. an intimate contact among the yarns and also to impede yarns
BONFIGLIO et al.: ORGANIC FIELD EFFECT TRANSISTORS FOR TEXTILE APPLICATIONS 323

shifts during the device working; this could be obtained by ap- vorable way when exploring a possible application as sensor de-
plying a constant and homogeneous pressure between the metal vices. Furthermore, the versatility of chemical synthesis could
wires that constitute the source and drain contacts and the tex- allow to develop specific functionalization of organic semicon-
tile ribbon. A possible idea for doing this is the lamination of ductors for specific chemical detection.
the mesh between two external layers, as it is normally done in Also the possibility of pressure and/or elongation sensing can
sail technology. This could allow to fix the reciprocal positions be considered as the current in the transistor channel is sensi-
of yarns in the mesh, giving rise to acceptable textile charac- tive to the pressure applied to the structure. This property could
teristics without increasing the rigidity of the obtained fabric. allow interesting applications of textile devices for biomedical
Therefore, again in the frame of textile technology, it is possible signal detection.
to envisage a possible technical solution of the problem that does
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a matter of fact, the final “transfer function” of a textile de- 58, pp. 904–912, Feb. 1993.
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[10] G. Horowitz and M. E. Hajlaoui, “Grain size dependent mobility in poly-
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[11] N. Stutzmann, R. H. Friend, and H. Sirringhaus, “Self-aligned, ver-
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of such idea, but, at the same time, has pointed out also the main transistors,” Solid-State Electron., vol. 47, pp. 297–301, Feb. 2003.
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reasonable timescale, at least the performance of amorphous
silicon. Annalisa Bonfiglio received the Laurea degree in
Furthermore, it must be recalled that for a future application physics at the University of Genoa, Genoa, Italy, in
1991 and the Ph.D. degree in bioengineering at the
perspective, several interesting properties of organic semicon- Politecnico di Milano, Milan, Italy, in 1996.
ductors could be further exploited. One possibility consists in She is currently Assistant Professor of Electronic
their chemical properties [16]: some of them are strongly sensi- Engineering at the University of Cagliari, Cagliari,
Italy. Her research interests concern organic semi-
tive to some chemical species as oxygen and other atmosphere conductor-based devices, in particular, field effect
gaseous species and what is normally considered as detrimental devices and solar cells.
for the behavior of transistor devices can be considered in a fa-
324 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY IN BIOMEDICINE, VOL. 9, NO. 3, SEPTEMBER 2005

Danilo De Rossi graduated from University of Fulvia Mameli received the Laurea degree in elec-
Genova, Genova, Italy, with the Ph.D. degree in tronic engineering from the University of Cagliari,
chemical engineering in 1976. Cagliari, Italy, in 2002.
From 1976 to 1981, he was a Researcher with the She is currently with ECOS, a small electronic
Institute of Clinical Physiology of CNR. He worked company based in Cagliari, Italy. Her research inter-
in France, USA, Brazil, and Japan. Since 1982, he has ests concern organic semiconductor-based devices
been with the School of Engineering, University of and textile electronics.
Pisa, Pisa, Italy, where presently he is a Full Professor
of Bioengineering and President of the Biomedical
Engineering Teaching Track. Since 1999, he has also
been an Adjunct Professor of Material Science with
Wollongong University, Wollongong, Australia. His scientific activities are re-
lated to the physics of organic and polymeric materials, and to the design of
sensors and actuators for bioengineering and robotics. He is the author of over Rita Paradiso graduated in physics from the Univer-
150 technical and scientific publications, and is co-author of seven books. sity of Genoa, Genoa, Italy, and received the Ph.D.
degree in bioengineering in 1991. During her Ph.D.,
she worked at the Physics Department of Queen Mary
College, London, U.K.
In 1993, she received a Postdoctor CE fellowship,
Tünde Kirstein received the M.S. degree in clothing in the framework of the Human Capital and Mobility
technology from the University of Applied Sciences, project at the Molecular Chemical Laboratory-CNE,
Hamburg, Germany, in 1996 and the Ph.D. degree Saclay, France. In 1994, she was a Postdoctorate
from the Department of Mechanical Engineering, Fellow from Genoa University, at the Department
Dresden University of Technology, Dresden, Ger- of Material Engineering of the University of Trento,
many, in 2001. Italy. During 1998, she worked at the IRST-Instituto Trentino di Cultura on
She was a CAD Engineer with Th. Braun, Ham- FIBIA, a project related to bio-activation of MEMS. From 1998 to 1999, she
burg, Germany, and a lecturer for clothing technology was Research Manager of Technobiochip s.r.l., Marciana (LI), Italy, working on
at the Fashion Design Academy Hamburg, Germany. two BRITE-EURAM II projects: BE97-4511 ([Link]) and BE97-5141
During her Ph.D. studies, she worked at the Institute ([Link].), and on a National Project, PNR Tema 10: Biosensors for the
of Textile and Clothing Technology, Dresden, Ger- Environmental Control. Molecular electronics, biosensors, and biomaterials
many. In 2001, she joined the Wearable Computing Laboratory, Swiss Federal for biomedical applications have been her main research topics. In particular,
Institute of Technology, Zurich, Switzerland, where she is in charge of the Smart she has worked on bio-functionalized surfaces and their characterization. She
Textiles Group. Her main research interest is the integration of electronic func- has over 20 scientific publications and conference presentations since 1989.
tionality into textiles and clothing. She joined Smartex in 2000 as R&D Manager. Since September 2001 has been
the coordinator of WEALTHY (IST-2001-37778), and since January 2004, has
been working in MYHEART, an Integrated Project (IST-2002-507816).

Ivo R. Locher received the [Link]. degree from the

University of Applied Science, Lucerne, Switzer- Giovanni Vozzi received the Laurea degree in elec-
land, in 1997, with a thesis about MSK transmitters tronic engineering from the University of Pisa, Pisa,
and receivers including their realization in hardware, Italy, in 1998 and the Ph.D .degree in bioengineering
and the [Link]. degree in electrical engineering in from the Politecnico di Milano, Milan, Italy, in 2002.
the field of signal processing from the University He is currently a Researcher at Interdepartmental
of California, Los Angeles, in 2002. He is cur- Center of Research “E. Piaggio,” Faculty of Engi-
rently working toward the Ph.D. from the Wearable neering of University of Pisa, Pisa, Italy. His research
Computing Laboratory, Swiss Federal Institute of interests concern microfabrication systems, in partic-
Technology, Zurich, Switzerland. ular, realization of polymeric structure for applica-
His research fields are E-textiles and textile pack- tion in tissue engineering, in actuation and sensoristic
aging. field, and development of organic transistor.

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