No Arabic abstract
The ability to actively regulate heat flow at the nanoscale could be a game changer for applications in thermal management and energy harvesting. Such a breakthrough could also enable the control of heat flow using thermal circuits, in a manner analogous to electronic circuits. Here we demonstrate switchable thermal transistors with an order of magnitude thermal on/off ratio, based on reversible electrochemical lithium intercalation in MoS2 thin films. We use spatially-resolved time-domain thermoreflectance to map the lithium ion distribution during device operation, and atomic force microscopy to show that the lithiated state correlates with increased thickness and surface roughness. First principles calculations reveal that the thermal conductance modulation is due to phonon scattering by lithium rattler modes, c-axis strain, and stacking disorder. This study lays the foundation for electrochemically-driven nanoscale thermal regulators, and establishes thermal metrology as a useful probe of spatio-temporal intercalant dynamics in nanomaterials.
Organic electrochemical transistors offer powerful functionalities for biosensors and neuroinspired electronics, with still much to understand on the time dependent behavior of this electrochemical device. Here, we report on distributed element modeling of the impedance of such microfabricated device, systematically performed under a large concentration variation for KCl(aq) and CaCl2(aq). We propose a new model which takes into account three main deviations to ideality, that were systematically observed, caused by both the materials and the device complexity, over large frequency range (1 Hz to 1 MHz). More than introducing more freedom degree, the introduction of these non redundant parameters and the study of their behaviors as function of the electrolyte concentration and applied voltage give a more detailed picture of the OECT working principles. This optimized model can be further useful for improving OECT performances in many applications (e.g. biosensors, neuroinspired devices) and circuit simulations.
The realization of both p-type and n-type operations in a single organic field effect transistor (OFET) is critical for simplifying the design of complex organic circuits. Typically, only p-type or n-type operation is realized in an OFET, while the respective counterpart is either suppressed by charge trapping or limited by the injection barrier with the electrodes. Here we show that only the presence of a top dielectric turns an n-type polymer semiconductor (N2200, Polyera ActiveInk) into an ambipolar one, as detected from both bottom and top gated OFET operation. The effect is independent of the channel thickness and the top dielectric combinations. Variable temperature transfer characteristics show that both the electrons and holes can be equally transported through the bulk of the polymer semiconductor.
Conjugated polymer-based organic electrochemical transistors (OECTs) are being studied for applications ranging from biochemical sensing to neural interfaces. While new conjugated polymers are being developed that can interface digital electronics with the aqueous chemistry of life, the vast majority of high-performance, high-mobility organic transistor materials developed over the past decades are extremely poor at taking up biologically-relevant ions. Here we incorporate an ion exchange gel into an OECT, demonstrating that this structure is capable of taking up biologically-relevant ions from solution and injecting larger, more hydrophobic ions into the underlying polymer semiconductor active layer in multiple hydrophobic conjugated polymers. Using poly[2,5-bis(3-tetradecylthiophen-2-yl) thieno[3,2-b]thiophene] (PBTTT) as a model semiconductor active layer and a blend of the ionic liquid 1-butyl-3-methylimidazolium bis(trifluoromethylsulfonyl)imide (BMIM TFSI) and poly(vinylidene fluoride-co-hexafluoropropylene) (PVDF-HFP) as the ion exchange gel, we demonstrate more than a four order of magnitude improvement in OECT device transconductance and a one hundred-fold increase in ion injection kinetics. We demonstrate the ability of the ion exchange gel OECT to record biological signals by measuring the action potentials of a Venus flytrap plant. These results show the possibility of using interface engineering to open up a wider palette of organic semiconductor materials as OECTs that can be gated by aqueous solutions.
Ferroelectric field-effect transistors employ a ferroelectric material as a gate insulator, the polarization state of which can be detected using the channel conductance of the device. As a result, the devices are of potential to use in non-volatile memory technology, but suffer from short retention times, which limits their wider application. Here we report a ferroelectric semiconductor field-effect transistor in which a two-dimensional ferroelectric semiconductor, indium selenide ({alpha}-In2Se3), is used as the channel material in the device. {alpha}-In2Se3 was chosen due to its appropriate bandgap, room temperature ferroelectricity, ability to maintain ferroelectricity down to a few atomic layers, and potential for large-area growth. A passivation method based on the atomic-layer deposition of aluminum oxide (Al2O3) was developed to protect and enhance the performance of the transistors. With 15-nm-thick hafnium oxide (HfO2) as a scaled gate dielectric, the resulting devices offer high performance with a large memory window, a high on/off ratio of over 108, a maximum on-current of 862 {mu}A {mu}m-1, and a low supply voltage.
Polymer composite electrolytes of Nafion and phosphotungstic acid (PWA) are fabricated and analyzed using electrochemical strain microscopy (ESM) and conductive atomic force microscopy (C-AFM) to visualize hydrophilic ion channels near the surface, which are composed of water and sulfonic acid groups. The results indicate that the fibrillar objects in ESM image, without significant changes in topography, are hydrophilic ion channels and additional ion channels formed by interaction between PWA and sulfonic groups in Nafion. In this study, the buried ion channels lying under the surface are probed as well as the inlet and outlet of the channels on the surface through combined use of ESM and C-AFM. The results further enhance the understanding of ionic conduction in composite polymer electrolytes in various fields.