Ink‐Jet Printable, Self‐Assembled, and Chemically Crosslinked Ion‐Gel as Electrolyte for Thin Film, Printable Transistors
Ink‐Jet Printable, Self‐Assembled, and Chemically Crosslinked Ion‐Gel as Electrolyte for Thin Film, Printable Transistors
Electrolyte‐gated transistors (EGTs) represent an interesting alternative to conventional dielectric‐gating to reduce the required high supply voltage for printed electronic applications. Here, a type of ink‐jet printable ion‐gel is introduced and optimized to fabricate a chemically crosslinked ion‐gel by self‐assembled gelation, without additional crosslinking processes, e.g., UV‐curing. For the self‐assembled gelation, poly(vinyl alcohol) and poly(ethylene‐alt‐maleic anhydride) are used as the polymer backbone and chemical crosslinker, respectively, and 1‐ethyl‐3‐methylimidazolium trifluoromethanesulfonate ([EMIM][OTf]) is utilized as an ionic species to ensure ionic conductivity. The as‐synthesized ion‐gel exhibits an ionic conductivity of ≈5 mS cm⁻¹ and an effective capacitance of 5.4 µF cm⁻² at 1 Hz. The ion‐gel is successfully employed in EGTs with an indium oxide (In₂O₃) channel, which shows on/off‐ratios of up to 1.3 × 10⁶ and a subthreshold swing of 80.62 mV dec⁻¹.

