Heat-Isolated Organic Field-Effect Transistors With Strong Electrostatic Discharge Tolerance

Organic field-effect transistors (OFETs) that are intrinsically flexible are desirable components for wearable electronics. A major challenge for these electronics is electrostatic discharge (ESD) from the human body, which can release ampere-level current surges and generate significant heat dissipation. As the molecular packing and the charge transport of the organic semiconductors are susceptible to temperature variation, especially to high temperatures, OFETs are generally vulnerable to ESD failure. Here, we report a heat-isolated OFET (hiOFET) with improved ESD tolerance by dispersing ESD current paths and isolating heat dissipation regions in the device. Our strategy realized the device failure level of up to 55.03 mA/mm, which was nearly 1.7 times higher than that of conventional transistor geometry. Moreover, the universality of this strategy was validated on various conjugated polymers.