Floating Electrode Transistor based on Single-walled Carbon Nanotube Networks for High Source--drain Voltage Operation

Thin film transistors (TFTs) based on single-walled carbon nanotubes (swCNTs) were reported to exhibit extraordinary characteristics in terms of their conductivity, transparency and flexibility. However, until now, most studies have focused on CNT-TFTs for an operation at a relatively low source--drain voltage below $\sim$ 10 V, while, for some applications such as LCD displays, one needs a rather high source--drain bias voltage. However, such a high voltage bias on source and drain electrodes may reduce the gating effect of conventional CNT-TFT devices by lowering the Schottky barrier and degrade its overall device performance. Herein, we developed floating electrode thin-film transistors (F-TFTs) based on semiconducting swCNT networks for a high source-drain voltage operation. In this device structure, the swCNT network channel was divided into a number of channels connected by floating metallic electrodes. At a high source-drain voltage, the F-TFTs showed a much higher on--off ratio than conventional swCNT-TFTs. This work should provide an important guideline in designing CNT-TFTs for high voltage applications.