Abstract
High-performance and low-power thin-film transistor technology is needed for the development of wearable electronics and the Internet of Things. However, the thermionic limit of the subthreshold swing sets an upper bound on the performance of such systems. Here we report a subthermionic organic thin-film tunnel transistor based on interfacial molecule decoupling. In these devices, minimized gap states at the interface between the metal oxide layer and the organic semiconductor lead to quantum band-to-band tunnelling injection at a small supply voltage. Our thin-film transistors exhibit a subthreshold swing of 24.2 ± 5.6 mV dec−1 and a signal amplification efficiency of 101.2 ± 28.3 S A−1. The average subthreshold swing is below 60 mV dec−1 for over four decades of current. We use the transistors to build amplification circuits that offer a gain of over 537 V V−1 at a low power of less than 0.8 nW, and create sensor interfaces that can measure electrophysiological signals with a high signal-to-noise ratio.
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Data availability
The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding authors upon reasonable request.
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Acknowledgements
We thank C.-S. Lee and Z. Guan of the City University of Hong Kong for the assistance in the UPS measurements. We thank B. Peng of Zhejiang University for providing the C8-DNTT samples. This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant numbers 52225303, 52173178, 62274115, U24A2082, 22461142144, 52532005 and 52473189), the National Key Research and Development Program of China (grant number 2024YFB3614500), the Science and Technology Development Fund (FDCT) of the Macao Special Administrative Region (grant number 0145/2022/A3), the Jiangsu Provincial Department of Science and Technology Leading Technology Basic Research Major Project (grant number BK20232041), the Suzhou Key Laboratory of Functional Nano & Soft Materials, the Collaborative Innovation Center of Suzhou Nano Science & Technology, Jiangsu Association for Science and Technology, Suzhou Association for Science and Technology and the 111 Project.
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W.D., Xiujuan Zhang, J.J. and Xiaohong Zhang conceived of the ideas. W.D., Z.L. and Y.Z. contributed to the OTFTT fabrication, measurements and data analysis. F.Q. and H.J. helped to optimize the fabrication conditions for the C8-BTBT single-crystalline films. W.D. checked the data and designed the amplifier circuit. Y.Z. created the amplifier and performed the EOG signal monitoring. Z.L. and Y. Wang contributed to the flexible transistor fabrication and measurements. X.R. performed the TEM measurements and data analysis under the supervision of W.D. W.D., Xiujuan Zhang, J.J. and Xiaohong Zhang co-wrote the paper and Supplementary Information. Y. Wu, X.-K.C. and H.S. discussed the results and helped revise the paper. W.D., Xiujuan Zhang, J.J. and Xiaohong Zhang supervised the project. All authors discussed the results and commented on the final paper.
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Supplementary Figs. 1–49, Discussions 1–13, Tables 1–3 and references.
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Deng, W., Zhang, X., Lu, Z. et al. Organic thin-film tunnel transistors. Nat Electron (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41928-025-01462-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41928-025-01462-7
