• Journal of the Korean Physical Society
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• 제73권9호
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• pp.1351-1355
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• 2018

The photocurrent characteristics of zinc-oxide (ZnO) thin-film transistors (TFTs) prepared using radio-frequency sputtering and spin-coating methods were investigated. Various characterization methods were used to compare the physical and the chemical properties of the sputtered and the spin-coated ZnO films. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy was used to investigate the chemical composition and state of the ZnO films. The transmittance and the optical band gap were measured by using UV-vis spectrometry. The crystal structures of the prepared ZnO films were examined by using an X-ray diffractometer, and the surfaces of the films were investigated by using scanning electron microscopy. ZnO TFTs were prepared using both sputter and solution processes, both of which showed photocurrent characteristics when illuminated by light. The sputtered ZnO TFTs had a photoresponsivity of 3.08 mA/W under illumination with 405-nm light while the solution-processed ZnO TFTs had a photoresponsivity of 5.56 mA/W. This study provides useful information for the development of optoelectronics based on ZnO.

• 한국전기전자재료학회논문지
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• 제28권5호
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• pp.291-294
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• 2015

Recently, ZnO based oxide TFTs used in the flexible and transparent display devices are widely studied. To apply to OLED display switching devices, electrical performance and stability are important issues. In this study, to improve these electrical properties, we fabricated TFTs having Al doped Zinc Oxide (AZO) layer inserted between the gate insulator and ZnO layer. The AZO and ZnO layers are deposited by Atomic layer deposition (ALD) method. I-V transfer characteristics and stability of the suggested devices are investigated under the positive gate bias condition while the channel defects are also analyzed by the photoluminescence spectrum. The TFTs with AZO layer show lower threshold voltage ($V_{th}$) and superior sub-threshold slop. In the case of $V_{th}$ shift after positive gate bias stress, the stability is also better than that of ZnO channel TFTs. This improvement is thought to be caused by the reduced defect density in AZO/ZnO stack devices, which can be confirmed by the photoluminescence spectrum analysis results where the defect related deep level emission of AZO is lower than that of ZnO layer.

• 한국진공학회:학술대회논문집
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• 한국진공학회 2016년도 제50회 동계 정기학술대회 초록집
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• pp.289.2-289.2
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• 2016

In-Ga-Zn-O(IGZO) receive great attention as a channel material for thin film transistors(TFTs) as next-generation display panel backplanes due to its superior electrical and physical properties such as a high mobility, low off-current, high sub-threshold slope, flexibility, and optical transparency. For the purpose of fabricating high performance IGZO TFTs, a thermal recovery process above a temperature of $300^{\circ}C$ is required for recovery or rearrangement of the ionic bonding structure. However diffused metal atoms from source/drain(S/D) electrodes increase the channel conductivity through the oxidation of diffused atoms and reduction of $In_2O_3$ during the thermal recovery process. Threshold voltage ($V_{TH}$) shift, one of the electrical instability, restricts actual applications of IGZO TFTs. Therefore, additional investigation of the electrical stability of IGZO TFTs is required. In this paper, we demonstrate the effect of Ti diffusion and modulation of interface traps by carrying out an annealing process on IGZO. In order to investigate the effect of diffused Ti atoms from the S/D electrode, we use secondary ion mass spectroscopy (SIMS), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, HSC chemistry simulation, and electrical measurements. By thermal annealing process, we demonstrate VTH shift as a function of the channel length and the gate stress. Furthermore, we enhance the electrical stability of the IGZO TFTs through a second thermal annealing process performed at temperature $50^{\circ}C$ lower than the first annealing step to diffuse Ti atoms in the lateral direction with minimal effects on the channel conductivity.

• 한국진공학회:학술대회논문집
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• 한국진공학회 2015년도 제49회 하계 정기학술대회 초록집
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• pp.160-160
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• 2015

InGaZnO (IGZO) thin-film transistors (TFTs) are very promising due to their potential use in high performance display backplane [1]. However, the stability of IGZO TFTs under the various stresses has been issued for the practical IGZO applications [2]. Up to now, many researchers have studied to understand the sub-gap density of states (DOS) as the root cause of instability [3]. Nomura et al. reported that these deep defects are located in the surface layer of the IGZO channel [4]. Also, Kim et al. reported that the interfacial traps can be affected by different RF-power during RF magnetron sputtering process [5]. It is well known that these trap states can influence on the performances and stabilities of IGZO TFTs. Nevertheless, it has not been reported how these defect states are created during conventional RF magnetron sputtering. In general, during conventional RF magnetron sputtering process, negative oxygen ions (NOI) can be generated by electron attachment in oxygen atom near target surface and accelerated up to few hundreds eV by self-bias of RF magnetron sputter; the high energy bombardment of NOIs generates bulk defects in oxide thin films [6-10] and can change the defect states of IGZO thin film. In this study, we have confirmed that the NOIs accelerated by the self-bias were one of the dominant causes of instability in IGZO TFTs when the channel layer was deposited by conventional RF magnetron sputtering system. Finally, we will introduce our novel technology named as Magnetic Field Shielded Sputtering (MFSS) process [9-10] to eliminate the NOI bombardment effects and present how much to be improved the instability of IGZO TFTs by this new deposition method.

• 한국정보디스플레이학회:학술대회논문집
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• 한국정보디스플레이학회 2008년도 International Meeting on Information Display
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• pp.1199-1202
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• 2008

High mobility bottom gate thin film transistors (TFTs) with an amorphous gallium tin zinc oxide (a-GSZO) channel layer have been produced by rf magnetron cosputtering using a gallium zinc oxide (GZO) and tin (Sn) targets. The effect of the post annealing temperatures ($200^{\circ}C$, $250^{\circ}C$ and $300^{\circ}C$) was evaluated and compared with two series of TFTs produced at room temperature and $150^{\circ}C$ during the channel deposition. From the results it was observed that the effect of pos annealing is crucial for both series of TFTs either for stability as well as for improving the electrical characteristics. The a-GSZO TFTs operate in the enhancement mode (n-type), present a high saturation mobility of $24.6\;cm^2/Vs$, a subthreshold gate swing voltage of 0.38 V/decade, a turn-on voltage of -0.5 V, a threshold voltage of 4.6 V and an $I_{ON}/I_{OFF}$ ratio of $8{\times}10^7$, satisfying all the requirements to be used in active-matrix backplane.

• 한국정보디스플레이학회:학술대회논문집
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• 한국정보디스플레이학회 2008년도 International Meeting on Information Display
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• pp.620-621
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• 2008

Transparent electronics has been one of the key terminologies forecasting the ubiquitous technology era. Several researchers have thus extensively developed transparent oxide-based thin-film transistors (TFTs) on glass and plastic substrates although in general high voltage operating devices have been mainly studied considering transparent display drivers. However, low voltage operating oxide TFTs with transparent electrodes are very necessary if we are aiming at logic circuit applications, for which transparent complementary or one-type channel inverters are required. The most effective and low power consuming inverter should be a form of complementary p-channel and n-channel transistors but real application of those complementary TFT inverters also requires electrical- and even photo-stabilities. Since p-type oxide TFTs have not been developed yet, we previously adopted organic pentacene TFTs for the p-channel while ZnO TFTs were chosen for n-channel on sputter-deposited $AlO_x$ film. As a result, decent inverting behavior was achieved but some electrical gate instability was unavoidable at the ZnO/$AlO_x$ channel interface. Here, considering such gate instability issues we have designed a unique transparent complementary TFT (CTFTs) inverter structure with top n-ZnO channel and bottom p-pentacene channel based on 12 nm-thin nano-oxide/self assembled monolayer laminated dielectric, which has a large dielectric strength comparable to that of thin film amorphous $Al_2O_3$. Our transparent CTFT inverter well operate under 3 V, demonstrating a maximum voltage gain of ~20, good electrical and even photoelectric stabilities. The device transmittance was over 60 % and this type of transparent inverter has never been reported, to the best of our limited knowledge.

• 대한전기학회논문지:전기물성ㆍ응용부문C
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• 제48권12호
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• pp.761-767
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• 1999

Poly-Si TFTs(polycrystalline silicon thin film transistors) fabricated on a low cost glass substrate have attracted a considerable amount of attention for pixel elements and peripheral driving circuits in AMLCS(active matrix liquid crystal display). In order to apply poly-Si TFTs for high resolution AMLCD, a high operating frequency and reliable circuit performances are desired. A new poly-Si TFT with CLBT(counter doped lateral body terminal) is proposed and fabricated to suppress kink effects and to improve the device stability. And this proposed device with BC(buried channel) is fabricated to increase ON-current and operating frequency. Although the troublesome LDD structure is not used in the proposed device, a low OFF-current is successfully obtained by removing the minority carrier through the CLBT. We have measured the dynamic properties of the poly-Si TFT device and its circuit. The reliability of the TFTs and their circuits after AC stress are also discussed in our paper. Our experimental results show that the BC enables the device to have high mobility and switching frequency (33MHz at $V_{DD}$ = 15 V). The minority carrier elimination of the CLBT suppresses kink effects and makes for superb dynamic reliability of the CMOS circuit. We have analyzed the mechanism in order to see why the ring oscillators do not operate by analyzing AC stressed device characteristics.

• Transactions on Electrical and Electronic Materials
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• 제18권1호
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• pp.55-57
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• 2017

Amorphous oxide thin film transistors (TFTs) were fabricated with 0.5 wt% silicon doped zinc tin oxide (a-0.5SZTO) thin film deposited by radio frequency (RF) magnetron sputtering. In order to investigate the effect of annealing treatment on the electrical properties of TFTs, a-0.5SZTO thin films were annealed at three different temperatures ($300^{\circ}C$, $500^{\circ}C$, and $700^{\circ}C$ for 2 hours in a air atmosphere. The structural and electrical properties of a-0.5SZTO TFTs were measured using X-ray diffraction and a semiconductor analyzer. As annealing temperature increased from $300^{\circ}C$ to $500^{\circ}C$, no peak was observed. This provided crystalline properties indicating that the amorphous phase was observed up to $500^{\circ}C$. The electrical properties of a-0.5SZTO TFTs, such as the field effect mobility (${\mu}_{FE}$) of $24.31cm^2/Vs$, on current ($I_{ON}$) of $2.38{\times}10^{-4}A$, and subthreshold swing (S.S) of 0.59 V/decade improved with the thermal annealing treatment. This improvement was mainly due to the increased carrier concentration and decreased structural defects by rearranged atoms. However, when a-0.5SZTO TFTs were annealed at $700^{\circ}C$, a crystalline peak was observed. As a result, electrical properties degraded. ${\mu}_{FE}$ was $0.06cm^2/Vs$, $I_{ON}$ was $5.27{\times}10^{-7}A$, and S.S was 2.09 V/decade. This degradation of electrical properties was mainly due to increased interfacial and bulk trap densities of forming grain boundaries caused by the annealing treatment.

• 한국진공학회:학술대회논문집
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• 한국진공학회 2014년도 제46회 동계 정기학술대회 초록집
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• pp.278.1-278.1
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• 2014

Organic materials have been explored as the gate dielectric layers in thin film transistors (TFTs) of backplane devices for flexible display because of their inherent mechanical flexibility. However, those materials possess some disadvantages like low dielectric constant and thermal resistance, which might lead to high power consumption and instability. On the other hand, inorganic gate dielectrics show high dielectric constant despite their brittle property. In order to maintain advantages of both materials, it is essential to develop the alternative materials. In this work, we manufactured nanocomposite gate dielectrics composed of organic material and inorganic nanoparticle and integrated them into organic TFTs. For synthesis of nanocomposite gate dielectrics, polyimide (PI) was explored as the organic materials due to its superior thermal stability. Candidate nanoprticles (NPs) of halfnium oxide, titanium oxide and aluminium oxide were considered. In order to realize NP concentration dependent electrical characteristics, furthermore, we have synthesized the different types of nanocomposite gate dielectrics with varying ratio of each inorganic NPs. To analyze gate dielectric properties like the capacitance, metal-Insulator-metal (MIM) structures were prepared together with organic TFTs. The output and transfer characteristics of organic TFTs were monitored by using the semiconductor parameter analyzer (HP4145B), and capacitance and leakage current of MIM structures were measured by the LCR meter (B1500, Agilent). Effects of mechanical cyclic bending of 200,000 times and thermally heating at $400^{\circ}C$ for 1 hour were investigated to analyze mechanical and thermal stability of nanocomposite gate dielectrics. The results will be discussed in detail.

• 한국진공학회:학술대회논문집
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• 한국진공학회 2012년도 제42회 동계 정기 학술대회 초록집
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• pp.466-468
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• 2012

Amorphous InGaZnO (${\alpha}$-IGZO) thin-film transistors (TFTs) are are very promising due to their potential use in thin film electronics and display drivers [1]. However, the stability of AOS-TFTs under the various stresses has been issued for the practical AOSs applications [2]. Up to now, many researchers have studied to understand the sub-gap density of states (DOS) as the root cause of instability [3]. Nomura et al. reported that these deep defects are located in the surface layer of the ${\alpha}$-IGZO channel [4]. Also, Kim et al. reported that the interfacial traps can be affected by different RF-power during RF magnetron sputtering process [5]. It is well known that these trap states can influence on the performances and stabilities of ${\alpha}$-IGZO TFTs. Nevertheless, it has not been reported how these defect states are created during conventional RF magnetron sputtering. In general, during conventional RF magnetron sputtering process, negative oxygen ions (NOI) can be generated by electron attachment in oxygen atom near target surface and accelerated up to few hundreds eV by self-bias of RF magnetron sputter; the high energy bombardment of NOIs generates bulk defects in oxide thin films [6-10] and can change the defect states of ${\alpha}$-IGZO thin film. In this paper, we have confirmed that the NOIs accelerated by the self-bias were one of the dominant causes of instability in ${\alpha}$-IGZO TFTs when the channel layer was deposited by conventional RF magnetron sputtering system. Finally, we will introduce our novel technology named as Magnetic Field Shielded Sputtering (MFSS) process [9-10] to eliminate the NOI bombardment effects and present how much to be improved the instability of ${\alpha}$-IGZO TFTs by this new deposition method.