• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2011.02a
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• pp.252-253
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• 2011

ZnO-based thin film transistors (TFTs) are of great interest for application in next generation flat panel displays. Most research has been based on amorphous indium-gallium-zinc-oxide (IGZO) TFTs, rather than single binary oxides, such as ZnO, due to the reproducibility, uniformity, and surface smoothness of the IGZO active channel layer. However, recently, intrinsic ZnO-TFTs have been investigated, and TFT- arrayss have been demonstrated as prototypes of flat-panel displays and electronic circuits. However, ZnO thin films have some significant problems for application as an active channel layer of TFTs; it was easy to change the electrical properties of the i-ZnO thin films under external conditions. The variable electrical properties lead to unstable TFTs device characteristics under bias stress and/or temperature. In order to obtain higher performance and more stable ZnO-based TFTs, HZO thin film was used as an active channel layer. It was expected that HZO-TFTs would have more stable electrical characteristics under gate bias stress conditions because the binding energy of Hf-O is greater than that of Zn-O. For deposition of HZO thin films, Hf would be substituted with Zn, and then Hf could be suppressed to generate oxygen vacancies. In this study, the fabrication of the oxide-based TFTs with HZO active channel layer was reported with excellent stability. Application of HZO thin films as an active channel layer improved the TFT device performance and bias stability, as compared to i-ZnO TFTs. The excellent negative bias temperature stress (NBTS) stability of the device was analyzed using the HZO and i-ZnO TFTs transfer curves acquired at a high temperature (473 K).

• Journal of the Microelectronics and Packaging Society
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• v.14 no.3
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• pp.15-20
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• 2007

Low temperature processed ZnO-TFTs on glass below $270^{\circ}C$ for plastic substrate applications were fabricated and their electrical properties were investigated. Films in ZnO-TFTs with bottom gate configuration were made by RF magnetron sputtering system except for $SiO_2$ gate oxide deposited by ICP-CVD. ZnO channel films were grown on glass with various Ar and $O_2$ flow ratios. All of the fabricated ZnO-TFTs showed perfectly the enhancement mode operation, a high optical transmittance of above 80% in visible ranges of the spectrum. In the ZnO-TFTs with pure Ar process, the field effect mobility, threshold voltage, and on/off ratio were measured to be $1.2\;cm^2/Vs$, 8.5 V, and $5{\times}10^5$, respectively. These characteristic values are much higher than those of the ZnO-TFTs of which ZnO channel layers were processed with additional $O_2$ gas. In addition, ZnO-TFT with pure Af process showed smaller swing voltage of 1.86v/decade compared to those with $Ar+O_2$ process.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2010.02a
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• pp.180-180
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• 2010

Thin film transistors (TFTs) based on oxide semiconductors have emerged as a promising technology, particularly for active-matrix TFT-based backplanes. Currently, an amorphous oxide semiconductor, such as InGaZnO, has been adopted as the channel layer due to its higher electron mobility. However, accurate and repeatable control of this complex material in mass production is not easy. Therefore, simpler polycrystalline materials, such as ZnO and $SnO_2$, remain possible candidates as the channel layer. Inparticular, ZnO-based TFTs have attracted considerable attention, because of their superior properties that include wide bandgap (3.37eV), transparency, and high field effect mobility when compared with conventional amorphous silicon and polycrystalline silicon TFTs. There are some technical challenges to overcome to achieve manufacturability of ZnO-based TFTs. One of the problems, the stability of ZnO-based TFTs, is as yet unsolved since ZnO-based TFTs usually contain defects in the ZnO channel layer and deep level defects in the channel/dielectric interface that cause problems in device operation. The quality of the interface between the channel and dielectric plays a crucial role in transistor performance, and several insulators have been reported that reduce the number of defects in the channel and the interfacial charge trap defects. Additionally, ZnO TFTs using a high quality interface fabricated by a two step atomic layer deposition (ALD) process showed improvement in device performance In this study, we report the fabrication of high performance ZnO TFTs with a $Si_3N_4$ gate insulator treated using plasma. The interface treatment using electron cyclotron resonance (ECR) $O_2$ plasma improves the interface quality by lowering the interface trap density. This process can be easily adapted for industrial applications because the device structure and fabrication process in this paper are compatible with those of a-Si TFTs.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2010.02a
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• pp.222-222
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• 2010

Transparent semiconductor oxide thin films have been attracting considerable attention as potential channel layers in thin film transistors (TFTs) owing to their several advantageous electrical and optical characteristics such as high mobility, high stability, and transparency. TFTs with ZnO or similar metal oxide semiconductor thin films as the active layer have already been developed for use in active matrix organic light emitting diode (AMOLED). Of late, there have been several reports on TFTs fabricated with InZnO, AlZnSnO, InGaZnO, or other metal oxide semiconductor thin films as the active channel layer. These newly developed TFTs were expected to have better electrical characteristics than ZnO TFTs. In fact, results of these investigations have shown that TFTs with the new multi-component material have excellent electrical properties. In this work, we present TFTs with inverted coplanar geometry and with a novel HfInZnO active layer co-sputtered at room temperature. These TFTs are meant for use in low voltage, battery-operated mobile and flexible devices. Overall, the TFTs showed good performance: the low sub-threshold swing was low and the $I_{on/off}$ ratio was high.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2015.08a
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• pp.204.1-204.1
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• 2015

We studied the electrical properties and gate bias stress (GBS) stability of thin film transistors (TFTs) with multi-stacked InZnO layers. The InZnO TFTs were fabricated via solution process and the In:Zn molar ratio was 1:1. As the number of InZnO layers was increased, the mobility and the subthreshold swing (S.S) were improved, and the threshold voltage of TFT was reduced. The TFT with three-layered InZnO showed high mobility of $21.2cm^2/Vs$ and S.S of 0.54 V/decade compared the single-layered InZnO TFT with $4.6cm^2/Vs$ and 0.71 V/decade. The three-layered InZnO TFTs were relatively unstable under negative bias stress (NBS), but showed good stability under positive bias stress (PBS).

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2014.02a
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• pp.164.2-164.2
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• 2014

In order to combine advantages of ZnO thin film transistors (TFTs) with a high on-off ratio and graphene TFTs with extremely high carrier mobility, we present a facile methodology for fabricating ZnO thin film/graphene hybrid two-dimensional TFTs. Hybrid TFTs exhibited ambipolar behavior, an outstanding electron mobility of $329.7{\pm}16.9cm^2/V{\cdot}s$, and a high on-off ratio of $10^5$. The ambipolar behavior of the ZnO/graphene hybrid TFT with high electron mobility could be due to the superimposed density of states involving the donor states in the bandgap of ZnO thin films and the linear dispersion of monolayer graphene. We further established an applicable circuit model for understanding the improvement in carrier mobility of ZnO/graphene hybrid TFTs.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2012.08a
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• pp.242-242
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• 2012

Transparent oxide semiconductors are increasingly becoming one of good candidates for high efficient channel materials of thin film transistors (TFTs) in large-area display industries. Compare to the conventional hydrogenated amorphous silicon channel layers, solution processed ZnO-TFTs can be simply fabricated at low temperature by just using a spin coating method without vacuum deposition, thus providing low manufacturing cost. Furthermore, solution based oxide TFT exhibits excellent transparency and enables to apply flexible devices. For this reason, this process has been attracting much attention as one fabrication method for oxide channel layer in thin-film transistors (TFTs). But, poor electrical characteristic of these solution based oxide materials still remains one of issuable problems due to oxygen vacancy formed by breaking weak chemical bonds during fabrication. These electrical properties are expected due to the generation of a large number of conducting carriers, resulting in huge electron scattering effect. Therefore, we study a novel technique to effectively improve the electron mobility by applying environmental annealing treatments with various gases to the solution based Li-doped ZnO TFTs. This technique was systematically designed to vary a different lithium ratio in order to confirm the electrical tendency of Li-doped ZnO TFTs. The observations of Scanning Electron Microscopy, Atomic Force Microscopy, and X-ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy were performed to investigate structural properties and elemental composition of our samples. In addition, I-V characteristics were carried out by using Keithley 4,200-Semiconductor Characterization System (4,200-SCS) with 4-probe system.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers Conference
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• 2009.06a
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• pp.44-44
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• 2009

Recently, transparent ZnO-based TFTs have attracted much attention for flexible displays because they can be fabricated on plastic substrates at low temperature. We report the fabrication and characteristics of ZnO channel layers(ZnO TFTs) having different channel thicknesses. The ZnO film were deposited as active channel layers on $Si_3N_4/Ti/SiO_2p$-Si substrates by rf magnetron sputtering at $100\;^{\circ}C$ without additional annealing. Also the Zno thin films deposited at oxygen partial pressures of 40%. ZnO TFTs using a bottom-gate configuration were investigated. The $Si_3N_4$ film were deposited as gate insulator by PE-CVD at $15\;^{\circ}C$. All Processes were processed below $150^{\circ}C$ which is optimal temperature for flexible display and were used dry etching method.

• Journal of the Korean Crystal Growth and Crystal Technology
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• v.17 no.5
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• pp.187-191
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• 2007

The device performance of ZnO-thin film transistors(ZnO-TFTs) with gate dielectrics of $SiO_2,\;SiN_x$ and Polyvinylphenol(PVP) having a bottom gate configuration were investigated. ZnO-TFTs can induce high device performance with low intrinsic carrier concentration of ZnO only by controlling gas flow rates without additional doping or annealing processes. The field effect mobility and on/off ratio of ZnO-TFTs with $SiN_x$ were $20.2cm^2V^{-1}s^{-1}\;and\;5{\times}10^6$ respectively which is higher than those previously reported. The device adoptable values of the mobility of $1.37cm^2V^{-1}s^{-1}$ and the on/off ratio of $6{\times}10^3$ were evaluated from the device with organic PVP dielectric.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2013.08a
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• pp.209.2-209.2
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• 2013

We proposed and fabricated zinc oxide thin-film transistors (TFTs) employing 4-mercaptophenol (4MP) doped ZnO by atomic layer deposition (ALD) that results in highly stable and high performance. The 4MP concentration in ZnO films were varied from 1.7% to 5.6% by controlling Zn:4MP pulses. The n-type carrier concentrations in ZnO thin films were controlled from $1.017{\times}10^{20}/cm^3$ to $2.903{\times}10^{17}/cm^3$ with appropriate amount of 4MP doping. The 4.8% 4MP doped ZnO TFT revealed good device mobility performance of 8.4 $cm^2/Vs$ and the on/off current ratio of 106. Such 4MP doped ZnO TFTs exhibited relatively good stability (${\Delta}V_{th}$: 2.4 V) under positive bias-temperature stress while the TFTs with only ZnO showed a 4.3 ${\Delta}V_{th}$ shift, respectively.