High performance printed aligned carbon nanotube transistors on both rigid and flexible substrates for transparent electronics

We report high-performance fully transparent thin-film transistors (TTFTs) on both rigid and flexible substrates. Such transistors have been fabricated through low temperature processing, which allowed device fabrication even on flexible substrates. Transparent transistors with high effective mobilities (-1,300 cm²V^-1s^-1) were first fabricated through engineering of the source and drain contacts. High on/off ratio (3 × 10⁴) was achieved via electrical breakdown. Flexible transparent TTFTs were fabricated and successfully operated under bending up to 120°. The transparent transistors were further utilized to construct a fully transparent and flexible logic inverter, and also used to control commercial GaN light-emitting diodes (LEDs) with a light intensity modulation of 10 ³ The aforementioned results suggest that aligned nanotubes have great potential as building blocks toward future transparent electronics.