H572 Journal of The Electrochemical Society, 158 (5) H572-H577 (2011)

0013-4651/2011/158(5)/H572/6/$28.00 V
C The Electrochemical Society

Geometry Pattern for the Wire Organic Electrochemical Textile

Transistor
Xuyuan Tao,a,b,z Vladan Koncar,a and Claude Dufourb
a
GEMTEX, Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Arts et Industries Textiles, 59056 Roubaix, France
b
IEMN (CNRS, UMR 8520), Université des Science et Technologies de Lille, F59652 Villeneuve d’Ascq, France

Polyelectrolytes are promising materials as gate dielectrics in organic electrochemical transistor. On the other side, the fibre form
transistor has become one of the most interesting topics in the field of smart textiles. The use of PEDOT:PSS to realize a parallel
wire electrochemical textile transistor has been reported. A new geometry pattern makes the transistor easier to insert into textile
fabric making the large-scale production possible. The length of transistor can be up to several centimeters. The On/Off ratio
reached up to 103. The switch time is near 15 s. An inverter circuit and a NOR-gated circuit have been realized by wire electro-
chemical transistors (WECTs). An amplifier was fabricated by using one transistor as well in order to demonstrate the feasibility
of fully textile electronic circuits.
C 2011 The Electrochemical Society.
V [DOI: 10.1149/1.3562962] All rights reserved.

Manuscript submitted April 16, 2010; revised manuscript received February 11, 2011. Published March 23, 2011.

Interest in textile transistors has been growing rapidly in recent or threads, called the warp (vertical or weaving direction) and the
decade. According to articles published until now, fibre transistors can filling or weft (horizontal direction), are interlaced to form a fabric.
be divided into two families: wire thin film transistors (WTFTs)1–3 In order to make a textile electronic circuit, it is necessary to create
and wire electrochemical transistors (WECTs).4,5 The advantage of first the fabric with the gate filament and the source-drain filament
WTFTs is the short response time (<1 ls), meanwhile the magnitude in weft and warp directions. Then, a post processing is necessary to
of the voltage required to control the gate is as high as several tens of bring the electrolyte to the cross section of these filaments and to re-
volts. On the other hand, the required control voltage for WECTs is alize finally the WECT. This post processing after the integration of
only 2–3 V. However, the large switch time, more than several tens of the yarns into the fabric makes WECTs unsuitable for the textile
seconds, scales down WECTs technology to quasi-static applications. application, because the electrolyte liquid may be easily absorbed
The difference between proprieties of WTFTs and WECTs results into the textile fabric by the capillarity force. As a result, an inflexi-
from different insulating materials between the gate and semiconduc- ble spot will be left in the textile structure, which may influence its
tor layers. For conventional organic field-effect transistors, the insulat- hand feel.
ing material is obtained from inorganic oxide (i.e., SiO2) or polymer In this article, a novel geometry pattern of WECTs has been
dielectrics (10 nF/cm2). Meanwhile for electrochemical transistors, reported. Two parallel filaments are twisted together like a thread.
the insulating layer is realized by the liquid or gel electrolyte (>10 One of them is used for the gate electrode and the other is used for
lF/cm2).6 The very high capacitance of electrolytes results from the drain and source electrodes. The PEDOT:PSS is used as thin-film
formation of electric double layers (EDLs) at interfaces, which can re- electrodes in the WECT.13,14 The ON and OFF states of transistor
alize a huge charge carrier density (>1014 cm2) in the channel of an are realized by the redox reaction of the PEDOT film
OFET compared to the traditional organic thin film transistor. The
advantage of these EDLs is that the applied voltages can be as low as PEDOTþ PSS þ Mþ þ e , PEDOT0 þ Mþ PSS [1]
several volts.7 þ
In terms of the geometry pattern of wire transistors, WTFTs inte- where M represents metal ions transported inside the electrolyte
grate the dielectric layer, the semiconductor layer and three electro- polymer, i.e. Ca2þ, Naþ and Kþ. The electron e– is transported
des (gate, source and drain) in one wire filament1,2 (Fig. 1a). As a inside the PEDOT:PSS film. The redox potential is in 0.2 to 0.4
result, the possibility and processability of integration of such tran- V,15 which is convenient to make a low-voltage electrochemical
sistors into textile fabric is easy to realize by simple physical con- transistor.
tacts between different yarns. However, in order to guarantee the The novel pattern for the WECT in this article facilitates the pro-
width-length ratio of the channel as large as possible, the deposited cess of integration of fibrous transistor into a weaving fabric. The
layer should cover the filament all around. Therefore, the filament advantage of our novel pattern is that the transistor may be realized
should be continually rotated during the evaporation process. Fur- before the integration into the textile fabric in order to make a fully
thermore, in order to assure the electrical performance, the thickness textile electronic circuit. The originality in this article consists in the
of different layers should be carefully controlled. Sometimes, the novel geometry pattern of WECT which provides a wide open possi-
mask of deposition is also necessary. Hence, this complicated pro- bility of integration of WECT into a traditional textile fabric. By
cess for the deposition of multiple layers makes WTFTs unsuitable using this novel WECT, the flexible textile electronic circuit can be
for the large-scale production. easily realized such as inverter, NOR-gated circuit and amplifier.
In the case of WECTs, the gate is on one yarn and other parts of This kind of WECT was inserted into a cotton fabric and the numer-
transistor are on another yarn. These two separated yarns are glued ical and analog circuits were realized. The aging of WECT is inves-
to each other via an electrolyte solid which can be ion gel,7–9 poly tigated in this article for the first time.
ion liquid10,11 or the combination of these two electrolytes12 (Fig.
1b). WECTs need neither multiple deposition nor mask, which sim- Materials and Measurements
plifies the manufacturing process. In fact, the coating process in so-
The high-conductivity PEDOT:PSS solution was purchased from
lution can be used to realize semiconductive or conductive layers on
H.C. Starck, Germany (CLEVIOS F DDP 105). The electrolyte so-
the yarn surface. Furthermore, because of the insensitivity of the
lution consists of 33 wt. % poly(styrenesulfonate) (PSS) (Aldrich), 12
electrolyte thickness between the channel and the gate electrode, the
wt. % glycol (Sigma-Aldrich), 8 wt. % D-sorbitol (Aldrich), water
geometry of the transistor does not have a major impact on electrical
and 0.1 M NaClO4 (Sigma-Aldrich). The electrolyte solution was
performance. The need for precise positioning is not necessary any
mixed up in an ultrasonic bath and can be conserved in fridge for sev-
more. Weaving is a textile craft in which two distinct sets of yarns
eral months. The CYCLOTENE 3022-35 resin (BCB35) is used as
received from the Dow Chemical Company without further
z
E-mail: [email protected] purifying.

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 Journal of The Electrochemical Society, 158 (5) H572-H577 (2011) H573

Figure 1. (Color online) The topologies for (a) WTFTs and (b) WECTs.

All electrical measurements were carried out at ambient atmos-

phere (20–22 C temperature and 37–40% relative humidity). Elec- Figure 3. (Color online) The scheme of WECT construction in form of a thread.
trical measurements of WECTs were carried out using the Agilent
4156C semiconductor parameter analyzer. For the textile circuit
testing, the input voltage was realized by waveform generators
(Tabor electronics WW5062 and Agilent 33220A). The output volt-
age was received by a two-Channel oscilloscope (Agilent 54622A).
The morphology of coated yarns was then investigated by Scanning
Electron Microscopy (ZEISS ULTRA 55).

Experimental
The PEDOT:PSS coating was continually carried out by a Coat-
ema coating machine with a solution vat and a hot air heating system
(Fig. 2). This device can realize a roll-to-roll coating with controllable
coating speed and heating temperature (>100 C). One bobbin of Kev-
lar multifilament (para-aramid fibre, 440 dtex, 131 monofilaments)
with PEDOT:PSS coating was obtained using this process. The run-
ning speed of the Kevlar filament was as fast as 0.5 m/min. The

Figure 4. (Color online) (a) The microscope image of the joint electrolyte.
Figure 2. (Color online) The scheme of the coating system. (Magnification 10); (b) the image of twisted wire electrochemical transistor.

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 H574 Journal of The Electrochemical Society, 158 (5) H572-H577 (2011)

Figure 5. (a) The cross section SEM image of the Kevlar multifilament Figure 7. Ids-Vgs and Igs-Vgs characteristics measured simultaneously for
coated with PEDOT:PSS; (b) the surface SEM image of the Kevlar multifila- WECT. The drain voltage was 1.5 V. The gate voltage was swept at a rate
ment coated with PEDOT:PSS. of 3 m/V.

Kevlar filament was heated by passing through the 1 m large oven

under 90 C. The coated bobbin can be kept under the ambient atmos-
phere for several months without changing the conductivity.
Two 50 cm coated filaments were cut from the bobbin for gate
electrode filament and source/drain electrode filament (Fig. 3a). A
drop of electrolyte solution was dripped in the middle of gate elec-
trode filament. This filament was heated in an oven at 55 C for 10
min (Fig. 3b). The length of coated electrolyte polymer was about 6
mm. After taken out of the oven, the gate electrode filament was
coated with BCB35 resin by dip-coating (10 cm/min) by an auto-
matic machine and then directly heated in a tubular oven at 250 C
for 15 min in ambient atmosphere (Fig. 3c). The BCB35 coating
was used as an insulator layer to avoid the electrical contact between
two parallel multifilaments when the gate electrode filament and the
source/drain electrode filament were twisted together. After the
resin layer was dried, the gate filament was snipped in the middle of
electrolyte (Fig. 3d). Finally, the gate electrode filament and the
source/drain electrode filament were twisted together and the end of
gate electrode filament with pre-coated electrolyte was glued again
to the source/drain electrode filament by a drop of electrolyte (about
1 mm long) (Fig. 4). In this way, the cross section of electrolyte is
not covered by the resin layer. After coated with another drop of
electrolyte gel, these two twisted parallel filaments are connected by
Figure 6. Typical Ids vs. Vds characteristics at various gate voltages for the the electrolyte. Hence, the resin layer doesn’t influence the electrical
sweep rate of 3 mV/s. conduction in the electrolyte.

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 Journal of The Electrochemical Society, 158 (5) H572-H577 (2011) H575

Figure 8. (Color online) (a) The circuit of logic inverter including a deple-
tion mode transistor and (b) the photo picture of a textile inverter.

Results and Discussion

This novel geometry pattern configuration makes the post-proc- Figure 9. (a) The input-output characteristics of inverter (b) the characteristics
of output for pulses of 500 s period time and 50% duty cycle.
essing unnecessary. The thread (WECT) can be inserted into a tex-
tile fabric without any difficulty. The conductivity of the
PEDOT:PSS coated Kevlar multifilament is simply measured as PEDOT:PSS interstices among monofilaments, which can be con-
3–4  103 S/cm by two-point method (avg. ¼ 3.4 mS/cm, std. sidered as the pure resistor, and from the leakage of the gate elec-
dev. ¼ 0.47 mS/cm). Figure 5a shows the cross section SEM image trode. Another explanation for this incomplete saturation can be
of the Kevlar multifilament coated with PEDOT:PSS. This material stand from the imperfect alignment of the electrolyte and the gate
was coated around the multifilament and penetrated interstices electrode.16
among filaments as well (the dark parts are conductive material). Figure 7 shows the Ids-Vgs transfer characteristics and Igs-Vgs
The thickness of the PEDOT:PSS layer is about 3–5 lm observed curve. The Igs-Vgs data reflects an apparent “three-step injection”
by SEM. From Fig. 5b, a smooth conductive layer is clearly process during the forward sweep. First, a positive peak is observed
observed. The conductive material may also be observed in around Vgs ¼ 0.2 V, corresponding to the first Ids decrease. Second,
interstices among monofilaments making a continuous conductive the following two important peaks are observed around Vgs ¼ 0.9 V
network. and Vgs¼1.3 V, corresponding to the significant decrease of Ids. A
Figure 6 shows the output characteristics of Ids vs. Vds of the possible explanation for this behavior is that sodium cations easily
twisted wire electrochemical transistor at sweep rate of 3 mV/s. For migrate to the channel surface but difficultly penetrate into
different Vgs, with the decrease of the Vds, the current in the chan- PEDOT:PSS interstices among coated filaments, which makes two
nel, Ids, was saturated when Vds arrived to the value corresponding following peaks.
to the beginning of the “pinch off” phenomenon. Even if the Vgs ¼ 0 By integrating the displacement current versus time data, we can
V, the source/drain electrode filament does not behave as a pure im- calculate the total injected 2D charge carrier density (Q’), like the
pedance but has saturation region. This phenomenon can be analysis of a cyclic voltammogram.17 The shaded area under the
explained by the existence of the electrolyte. When Vds arrives to a reverse sweeps of the Igs-Vgs curve corresponds to sodium cation
negative value, cations of the electrolyte diffuse to the negatively bi- density of 3  1015 charge/cm2 (474 lC/cm2).
ased side of the channel. As a result, the reduction of the PEDOT The repeated Ids-Vgs sweep of WECTs was carried out in order
occurs at the drain side. Notice that above the pinch-off, Ids does not to check hysteresis behavior. Between every measure cycle, the
completely saturate and linearly increases with Vds. This part of cur- WECT was stabilized in air in order to let the active material return
rent comes both from the existence of the difficultly reduced to initial state. The hysteresis behavior was stable in the first ten

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 H576 Journal of The Electrochemical Society, 158 (5) H572-H577 (2011)

Figure 10. The output characteristics of NOR-gated including two depletion

mode transistors.

cycles. Then the Ioff increased and the Ion decreased. The On/Off ra-
tio decreased and stabilized to 102.
The circuit of logical inverter and its photo image realized with Figure 11. The circuit of one-transistor amplifier with the associated ampli-
the twisted WECT in a textile structure (cotton fabric) were shown fication characteristics.
in Fig. 8. The resistors were realized by a conducting yarn coated
with carbon black.18 The values of resistors were R1 ¼ R2 þ R3 and
R3 ¼ 2  R2. The value of R2 can be estimated as twenty times of directly into textile structures. Figure 11 shows the basic one-transis-
the resistance of WECT in a conductive state. The period of pulse tor amplifier. The load resistor gives the amplification. With a resistor
was 400 s and the duty cycle was 50%. When the gate receives an of 200 kX, the estimated amplification is about 7.5 times for small
input voltage of 0 or 1 V, the transistor will turn ON or OFF. Figure input signals, provided that the input DC-level is set in order to cor-
9a shows the input–output characteristics when the input signal is rectly bias.
changing gradually between 0 and 1 V. The switch time ON-to-OFF
was about 15–16 s and the switch time OFF-to-ON was about 17–18
Conclusion
s. The same characteristics were obtained when the period of pulse
was decreased to 100 s. A short temporary increase of the Vout In this work, a novel geometry pattern of twisted wire electro-
before the decrease when the Vin switch from 0 to 1 V can be chemical transistor has been reported. Two Kevlar multifilaments
explained by the hydrolysis of electrolyte.19 were coated with PEDOT:PSS as electrodes. One of them was
Figure 9b shows the aging of inverter with an input pulse of 500 coated with the electrolyte in the middle of filament. After being
s period time. The aging occurred at about 40,000 s. At this moment, coated with the resin and cut off, this filament was glued with the
the electrolyte was switched for at least 80 times. The OFF voltage other one by the electrolyte, and then twisted together. A post-proc-
increased because of the electrolyte aging. Meanwhile, a slight drop essing is not necessary for this geometry pattern for textile applica-
in the ON voltage (15%) has been observed. This change can be ten- tions. The transistor filament can be as long as tens of centimeters.
tatively addressed to the residue of cations in the bulk of The output and transfer measurements have shown the same charac-
PEDOT:PSS. The resistance of a single coated multifilament with teristics as the traditional wire electrochemical transistor. The On/
an electrolyte gel was measured. The resistance increased from 3.2 Off ratio reached up to 103. If the UV-sensitive BCB resin is used as
to 4.7 kX/cm during 20 h. an insulating layer, the cut-off process will not be necessary. By this
Logical gates with more than one input are straightforward approach, the large-scale production could be realized.
extensions of the inverter. Figure 10 shows the output behavior of A one-transistor inverter circuit and a NOR-gate circuit have
different input signals of a NOR-gate circuit. This NOR-gate circuit been realized by using the new pattern WECTs. The switch time
was simply created by connecting two WECTs in series. value in our article is higher than a traditional planar electrochemi-
Besides the digital circuit, WECTs can also be used to realize ana- cal PEDOT transistor. For a traditional PEDOT based ECT, the
log circuits such as an amplifying one. These circuits open up the pos- switch time can be as low as several seconds.14 As for a WECT
sibility to implement sensor amplifiers, comparators, frequency-selec- made of monofilament,5 the switch time is only about 4–5 s. This
tive filters, oscillators, timers, feedback-control systems, etc.14 short switch time is due to a short drain-source distance (several

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 Journal of The Electrochemical Society, 158 (5) H572-H577 (2011) H577

hundreds of micrometers). However, in our case, the WECT length 3. S. Locci, M. Maccioni, E. Orgiu, and A. Bonfiglio, IEEE Trans. Electron Devices,
is several centimeters. Thus, the switch time is higher than the val- 54, 2362 (2007).
4. D. De Rossi, Nature Mater., 6, 328 (2007).
ues in the references. 5. M. Hamedi, R. Forchheimer, and O. Inganas, Nature Mater., 6, 357 (2007).
An analog amplifier has been fabricated as well. The amplification 6. M. J. Panzer and C. D. Frisbie, J. Am. Chem. Soc., 129, 6599 (2007).
reached up to 7.5. The new twisted WECT opens a promising per- 7. M. J. Panzer and C. D. Frisbie, Adv. Mater., 20, 3177 (2008).
spective of designing electronic circuits directly into textile structures. 8. M. J. Panzer and C. D. Frisbie, J. Am. Chem. Soc., 127, 6960 (2005).
9. J. Lee, M. J. Panzer, Y. He, T. P. Lodge, and C. D. Frisbie, J. Am. Chem. Soc.,
By changing the electrolyte, it would be possible to create textile sen- 129, 4532 (2007).
sors as well. In combination with other conductive yarns, the complex 10. R. Marcilla, J. A. Blazquez, J. Rodriguez, J. A. Pomposo, and D. Mecerreyes,
smart textile circuit will be realized in near future. J. Polym. Sci. Part A: Polym. Chem., 42, 208 (2004).
11. R. Marcilla, J. A. Blazquez, R. Fernandez, H. Grande, J. A. Pomposo, and D.
Mecerreyes, Macromol. Chem. Phys., 206, 299 (2005).
Acknowledgments 12. R. Marcilla, F. Alcaide, H. Sardon, J. A. Pomposo, C. Pozo-Gonzalo, and D.
Mecerreyes, Electrochem. Commun., 8, 482 (2006).
We thank GLAWE Andrea for assistance with the Kevlar multi- 13. P. Andersson, D. Nilsson, P.-O. Svensson, M. Chen, A. Malmstrom, T. Remonen,
filament coat. This work was supported in part by the Society Coat- T. Kugler, and M. Berggren, Adv. Mater., 14, 1460 (2002).
14. M. Berggren, R. Forchheimer, J. Bobacka, P. O. Svensson, D. Nilsson, O. Larsson,
ema Coating Machinery Gmbh. and A. Ivaska, Organic Semiconductors in Sensor Applications, p. 263, Springer-
Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Arts et Industries Textiles assisted in Verlag, Berlin (2008).
15. X. Y. Cui and D. C. Martin, Sens. Actuators B, 89, 92 (2003).
meeting the publication costs of this article. 16. L. Herlogsson, X. Crispin, N. D. Robinson, M. Sandberg, O.-J. Hagel, G. Gustafs-
son, and M. Berggren, Adv. Mater., 19, 97 (2007).
References 17. M. J. Panzer and C. D. Frisbie, Adv. Funct. Mater., 16, 1051 (2006).
1. J. B. Lee and V. Subramanian, IEEE Trans. Electron Devices, 52, 269 (2005). 18. C. Cochrane, V. Koncar, M. Lewandowski, and C. Claude, Sensors, 7, 473 (2007).
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