In this paper, we report the design of an organic thin-film transistor (OTFT) driver circuit for the actuator of an organic fluid pump, which can be integrated in a portable-size fully-organic artificial lung. Compared to traditional pump designs, lightness, compactness and scalability are achieved by adopting a creative pumping mechanism with a completely organic-material-based system concept. The transportable fluid volume is verified to be flexibly adjustable, enabling on-demand controllability and scalability of the pump's fluid-flow rate. The simulations, based on an accurate surface-potential OTFT compact model, demonstrate that the necessary driving waveforms can be efficiently generated and adjusted to the actuator requirements. At the actuator-driving-circuit frequency of 0.98Hz, an all-organic fluid pump with 40cm length and 0.2cm height is able to achieve a flow rate of 0.847L/min, which satisfies the requirements for artificial-lung assist systems to a weakened normal lung.

We fabricated solution-processed organic complementary inverters based on α,ω-bis(2-hexyldecyl)sexithiophene (BHD6T) for p-channel and C60-fused N-methylpyrrolidine-meta-dodecyl phenyl (C60MC12) for n-channel. The BHD6T and C60MC12 thin-film transistors showed high field-effect mobilities of 0.035 and 0.057 cm2/Vs, respectively. The complementary inverter with a supply voltage of 50 V exhibited inverting voltages of 26.8 V for forward and 27.0 V for backward sweeps and a high gain of 76.

Effects of atomic hydrogen annealing (AHA) on the film properties and the electrical characteristics of pentacene organic thin-film transistors (OTFTs) are investigated. The surface energy of SiO2 surface and grain size of pentacene film were decreased with increasing AHA treatment time. For the treatment time of 300 s, pentacene film showed the (00l) and (011') orientation and high carrier mobility in spite of small crystal grain.