Experimental design of stencil-printed high-performance organic electrochemical transistors.

Organic electrochemical transistors (OECTs) are widely employed in several bioelectronic applications such as biosensors, logic circuits, and neuromorphic engineering, providing a seamless link between the realm of biology and electronics. More specifically, OECTs are endowed with remarkable signal amplification, the ability to operate in an aqueous environment, and the effective transduction of ionic to electrical signals. One main limiting factor preventing OECTs' wide use is the need for microfabrication processes, typically requiring specialized equipment. From this perspective, a robust and cost-effective production protocol to achieve high-performing OECT would be desirable. Herein, a straightforward stencil-printed OECT fabrication procedure is proposed, where the electrical performance can be controlled by adjusting the electronic channel fabrication conditions. An experimental design approach is undertaken to optimize OECT figures of merit by varying key parameters such as the annealing temperature and time, as well as the transistor active channel length. The resulting OECT devices, fabricated through a high-yield, cost-effective, and fast stencil printing technique, feature large transconductance values at low operating voltages. The experimental design allowed for minimizing the threshold voltage (