352 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON NANOTECHNOLOGY, VOL. 11, NO.

2, MARCH 2012
n-Type Metal-Base Organic Transistor
Abd. Rashid bin Mohd. Yusoff, Ying Song, Dietmar Schulz, Eikner Holz, and Saiful Anuar Shuib
AbstractThis investigation proposes an Ir(ppy)
3
/Ir(mpp)
3
double-emitter heterojuction metal-base transistors grown by vac-
uum sublimation deposition. The improved structure exhibits the
advantages of high ON-to-OFF current ratio 4.98 10
6
and high
current gains () 355.6. The device survived for almost two months
with a slight dropped in these parameters before it is completely
gone in four months. Furthermore, this study elucidates the re-
lation between leakage current, current gains, and ON-to-OFF
current ratio.
Index TermsBipolar transistor, iridiumcomplexes, metal-base
transistor (MBT).
I. INTRODUCTION
T
HE homojunction p-n diode is the simplest semiconductor
device, comprising one p-n junction. In attempts to im-
prove both static and dynamic diode electrical properties for
different type applications, numerous diode types have evolved.
One of the newly investigated devices is metal-base transistors
(MBTs). The MBTs have the characteristics of high current
gains [1][4], high ON-to-OFF current ratio [4], [5], and low
leakage current [3][5], but low breakdown voltage (BV
CEO
)
and gains instability. Many efforts have been made on the im-
provement of breakdown voltage and instability.
The purpose of this study is to report a new MBTs employing
simple route of fabrication process and to study the stability of
all key parameters such as current gain and ON-to-OFF cur-
rent ratio for approximately four months. We have fabricated
the MBTs on the oat-zone (FZ) silicon to reduce the leakage
current. FZ silicon is a high resistivity and high purity wafer.
Recently, many groups reported the uses of FZ silicon for ob-
taining high gains in bipolar junction transistor (BJT) [6], high
gains in bipolar detector [7], high gains phototransistor [8], and
hot electron spin valve phototransistor [9], but low breakdown
voltage has been reported scarcely.
II. EXPERIMENTAL DETAILS
Fig. 1(a) shows the energy level and Fig. 1(b) shows the
device structure of all materials used in the fabrication of the
Manuscript received June 15, 2011; revised September 11, 2011; accepted
October 14, 2011. Date of publication November 15, 2011; date of current ver-
sion March 9, 2012. The review of this paper was arranged by Associate Editor
G. Ramanath.
A. R. B. M. Yusoff is with the Departamento de Fsica, Group of Organic Op-
toelectronic Devices, Universidade Federal do Paran a, Curitiba, Paran a 81531-
990, Brazil (e-mail: abd@sica.ufpr.br).
Y. Song and S. A. Shuib are with Komax Systems Malaysia, 11900 Penang,
Malaysia (e-mail: s.saiful-anuar@live.com; y.song@hotmail.my).
D. Schulz and E. Holz are with Komax Systems LCF SA, 2301 La Chaux-
de-Fonds, Switzerland (e-mail: d.schulz@live.com.my; e.holz@live.com.my).
Color versions of one or more of the gures in this paper are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identier 10.1109/TNANO.2011.2173210
Fig. 1. (a) Energy diagram and schematic structure of FZ-Si/PANI/Ir(ppy)
3
/
Ir(mpp)
3
/LiF/Al and (b) layer sequence of studied device.
MBTs. Tris(2-phenylpyridinato-N,C2

)iridium(III) Ir(ppy)
3
and
tris(3-methyl-2-phenylpyridine)iridium(III) Ir(mpp)
3
were se-
lected as an emitter because of its highest occupied molec-
ular orbital (HOMO) and lowest occupied molecular orbital
(LUMO) energy. The fabricated MBT has the structure of FZ-
Si/PANI/Ir(ppy)
3
/Ir(mpp)
3
/LiF/Al. PANI is dened as polyani-
line and used as a base terminal. The FZ-Si with 280 m thick
(100 cm
1
) is cleaned with HF buffer [10]. The FZ-Si sub-
strate was cut into 1 mm 1 mm 280 m (thickness) sizes
and served as a collector terminal. The miscut angle of the plane
was less than 0.1

. The surface was then polished in order to

obtain a macroatness of <0.01

and a microroughness (rms) of

<5

A. Prior to the device fabrication, the FZ-Si substrates were
immersed successively in ultrasonic baths of chloroform, ace-
tone, and ethanol, each for 30 min. In the glove box, the clean FZ
silicon was dipped into the 26 ml, 1.2 M HCl aqueous solution
that contained 1.8 mmol aniline and 1.8 mmol (NH
4
)
2
S
2
O
8
at
0

C for polymer lm deposition. Emitter and buffer layer were

made by evaporating Ir(ppy)
3
, Ir(mpp)
3
, and LiF (600 and 5

A
thickness), respectively. Cathode was made by evaporating a
layer of Al (600

A thickness). All evaporation processes were
made using vacuum sublimation deposition. Upon the comple-
tion of fabrication process, as-fabricated devices were annealed
at 100

C for 1 h under oxygen atmosphere. This simple heat

treatment was carried out to remove any water residue from the
fabricated sample. All 30 fabricated samples have been encap-
sulated to enhance the lifetime of the MBT [11].
The fabricated MBT was then transferred into a nitrogen-
lled glove box where both O
2
and H
2
O are below 0.1 ppm
1536-125X/$26.00 2011 IEEE
BIN MOHD. YUSOFF et al.: N-TYPE METAL-BASE ORGANIC TRANSISTOR 353
Fig. 2. (a) Common emitter IV characteristics of FZ-
Si/PANI/Ir(ppy)
3
/Ir(mpp)
3
/LiF/Al device measured at room temperature. (b)
HRTEM image of FZ-Si/PANI/Ir(ppy)
3
/Ir(mpp)
3
.
and placed on a homebuilt sample holder. The currentvoltage
IV measurements were performed using Keithley 4200 semi-
conductor characterization system. All measurements were per-
formed in the total darkness. In order to investigate the stability
of our devices, all measurements have been repeatedly per-
formed every week until the 16th week and all devices have
been stored in a vacuum.
III. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
Fig. 2(a) (as-prepared device) illustrates the well-behaved
family curves of versus, with ranging from 0 to 450 A in
0.14 A steps with an active arc of about 1 mm wide by 1 mm
long. The device was able to operate at an average V
CE
as high
as 5 V with a high and stable of 355.6 at V
CE
= 5 V and
I
B
= 1 A. This is stable over a wide range of V
CE
and it does
not experience any falloff at a higher V
CE
, which is to date
the highest value reported from common emitter operation at
this high current level of an MBT and the rst reported stable
. The selective area emitter terminal offers two advantages.
First, an extremely low offset voltage of <2.1 V at a low I
B
= 0.14 nA was observed. Even at a higher I
B
= 1 A, the off-
set voltage was still low 0.16 V. This reduction compared with
Fig. 3. Current gain as a function of the collectoremitter voltage of FZ-
Si/PANI/Ir(ppy)
3
/Ir(mpp)
3
/LiF/Al device.
the traditional metal-base or permeable-base transistor is due
to the improved base contacts afforded by this procedure, as
no break in vacuum occurred during the fabrication procedures.
The observed offset voltage is similar to those reported in the
previous published studies [12], [13]. The second advantage is
precise placement of the junction. Our high-resolution trans-
mission electron microscopy (HRTEM) images [see Fig. 2(b)]
show that a proper acid etch before the electroploymerization
ensured the appropriate placement of the heterojunction that was
effective to increase the emitter injection efciency. An average
leakage current of all fabricated devices was 7.143 10
11
A.
Fig. 3 shows that increased rapidly with the increase in
I
B
and V
CE
. A closer look at the curve, for example, at I
B
=
0.14 nAand V
CE
=0.4 V, reveals that had achieved its highest
value of 306. It is interesting to see that at I
B
=1 Aand V
CE
=
0.4 V, is increased up to 12% of its initial value. We attributed
this high at low V
CE
to a high electron injection coefcient.
To further understand the stability of the MBTs, we performed
the common emitter characteristics on the same samples at 16
different weeks with different ON and OFF currents. As the
measurements were taken at different weeks, the device experi-
enced some degradation process. In each measurement, the V
CE
is scanned from 0 to 5 V, and I
B
is varied from 0 to 1 A. The
emitter is grounded and a collector bias of 1 mV is applied to
the device. Here, both ON and OFF currents are dened at
a specic I
B
. The ON and OFF values are taken for V
CE
= 5 V
and I
B
=1 Aand 0, respectively. At different I
B
, ONcurrent is
different. We dened the device ON-to-OFF current ratio to be
the maximumcurrent at maximumI
B
(1 A) over the minimum
current at the minimumI
B
(0). AminimumOFF current of each
day is different and is realized at V
CE
= 5 V at minimum I
B
.
As can be seen in Fig. 4, the ON-to-OFF ratio on the rst day is
4.98 10
6
. In comparison, an ON-to-OFF ratio decreased al-
most 29.7% from its initial value is observed in the eight weeks
on the same device. As for the 16th weeks, due to the existence
of I
C
at I
B
= 0; the ON-to-OFF current ratio decreased by 80%
is compared with the ON-to-OFF current ratio on day rst. The
decrement in the device ON-to-OFF current ratio at a longer
period is due to the increment in OFF current. This increment
in OFF current corresponds to leakage current. We attribute the
354 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON NANOTECHNOLOGY, VOL. 11, NO. 2, MARCH 2012
Fig. 4. Device ON-to-OFF ratio versus weeks. The ON and OFF currents
measured at V
CE
= 5 V and I
B
= 1 A and 0, respectively.
Fig. 5. Device current gain versus weeks.
high ON/OFF current ratio on the rst day due to heat treatment
and this phenomenon was published by Yokoyama and cowork-
ers [14] where, in their study, the longer the heating treatment,
the lower the OFF current, and consequently, the higher the
ON/OFF current ratio. In our studied device, the reduction of
the ON-to-OFF current ratio is accompanied with the reduction
of the for the same period of time.
As shown in Fig. 5, a 4.1% decrement of occurred on the
eighth week and a total of 19.3% decrement took place on the
16th week from its initial value of 356.
This reduction in is expected due to the some degradation
process occurred during a long period of time. Although many
precaution steps have been implemented during this work, al-
most 80% of the fabricated devices did not survive. Obviously,
this is such undesirable feature and we are now deeply looking
into this problem. An element that contributes into this unwanted
problem is surface contamination.
IV. CONCLUSION
In summary, we demonstrated a composite-emitter double
heterojuction MBTs with a breakdown voltage of around 30 V
at room temperature. The ON-to-OFF current ratio is also en-
hanced up to 4.98 10
6
. Due to some degradation process,
the ON-to-OFF current ratio decreased to 6.34 10
5
. We also
demonstrated that the reduction of ON-to-OFF current ratio is
accompanied with the decrement in the current gain. The stable
characteristic of common emitter current gain may be due to a
high quality of base and baseemitter interface.
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Authors photographs and biographies not available at the time of publication.