We present a simple but effective approach to fabricate high-quality crystalline rubrene thin-film active layers for organic thin-film transistors (OTFTs) based on an abrupt heating process. Through this method, continuous, highly ordered, and highly oriented crystalline rubrene thin films comprising large single-crystalline grains (average size: similar to 80 mu m) can be remarkably rapidly produced in just 1 min without any dielectric surface modification process. OTFTs with carrier mobility as high as 1.21 cm(2) V (1) s (1) and on/off current ratios greater than 10(6) are demonstrated under air-ambient condition using the approach. These results suggest that our approach is very promising to fabricate high-performance OTFTs for practical applications in organic electronics. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.