Three-Dimensional Percolation and Performance of Nanocrystal Field-Effect Transistors

The understanding of charge transport through films of semiconductor nanocrystals (NCs) is fundamental for most applications envisaged for these materials, e.g., light-emitting diodes, solar cells, and thin-film field-effect transistors (FETs). In this work, we show that three-dimensional film-thickness-dependent percolation effects taking place above the percolation threshold strongly affect the charge transport in NC films and greatly determine the performance of NC devices such as NC FETs. We use thin films of Si NCs with a wide range of thicknesses controllable by spray coating of NC inks to thoroughly investigate the electronic properties and charge transport in thin NC films. We find a steep (superlinear) increase of the electrical conductivity with increasing film thickness, which is not observed in bulk semiconductor thin films with bandlike charge transport. We explain this increase by an exponentially increasing number of charge percolation paths in a system dominated by hopping charge transport. Thin-film NC FETs reveal thickness-independent field-effect mobilities and threshold voltages, whereas on:off current ratios decrease quickly with increasing film thickness. We show that the steep enhancement of electrical conductivity with increasing film thickness provided by three-dimensional percolation effects is, in fact, responsible for the dramatic degradation of NC FET performance observed with increasing film thickness. Our work demonstrates that the performance of NC FETs is much more critically sensitive to film thickness than in conventional FET-based bulk semiconductor materials.