A soluble and air-stable organic semiconductor with high electron mobility

Electronic devices based on organic semiconductors offer an attractive alternative to conventional inorganic devices due to potentially lower costs, simpler packaging and compatibility with flexible substrates1,2. As is the case for silicon-based microelectronics, the use of complementary logic elements—requiring n- and p-type semiconductors whose majority charge carriers are electrons and holes, respectively—is expected to be crucial to achieving low-power, high-speed performance. Similarly, the electron-segregating domains of photovoltaic assemblies require both n- and p-type semiconductors3,4,5. Stable organic p-type semiconductors are known6, but practically useful n-type semiconductor materials have proved difficult to develop, reflecting the unfavourable electrochemical properties of known, electron-demanding polymers7. Although high electron mobilities have been obtained for organic materials, these values are usually obtained for single crystals at low temperatures, whereas practically useful field-effect transistors (FETs) will have to be made of polycrystalline films that remain functional at room temperature. A few organic n-type semiconductors that can be used in FETs are known, but these suffer from low electron mobility, poor stability in air and/or demanding processing conditions8,9,10. Here we report a crystallographically engineered naphthalenetetracarboxylic diimide derivative that allows us to fabricate solution-cast n-channel FETs with promising performance at ambient conditions. By integrating our n-channel FETs with solution-deposited p-channel FETs, we are able to produce a complementary inverter circuit whose active layers are deposited entirely from the liquid phase. We expect that other complementary circuit designs11 can be realized by this approach as well.