• Journal of the Korean Physical Society
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• v.73 no.9
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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.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers
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• v.28 no.5
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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.

• Korean Journal of Materials Research
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• v.33 no.12
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• pp.511-516
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• 2023

Amorphous In-Ga-Zn-O (a-IGZO) thin film transistors (TFTs) with a coplanar structure were fabricated to investigate the feasibility of their potential application in large size organic light emitting diodes (OLEDs). Drain currents, used as functions of the gate voltages for the TFTs, showed the output currents had slight differences in the saturation region, just as the output currents of the etch stopper TFTs did. The maximum difference in the threshold voltages of the In-Ga-Zn-O (a-IGZO) TFTs was as small as approximately 0.57 V. After the application of a positive bias voltage stress for 50,000 s, the values of the threshold voltage of the coplanar structure TFTs were only slightly shifted, by 0.18 V, indicative of their stability. The coplanar structure TFTs were embedded in OLEDs and exhibited a maximum luminance as large as 500 nits, and their color gamut satisfied 99 % of the digital cinema initiatives, confirming their suitability for large size and high resolution OLEDs. Further, the image density of large-size OLEDs embedded with the coplanar structure TFTs was significantly enhanced compared with OLEDs embedded with conventional TFTs.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2012.02a
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• pp.450-450
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• 2012

In recent days, advances in ZnO-based oxide semiconductor materials have accelerated the development of thin-film transistors (TFTs), which are the building blocks for active matrix flat-panel displays including liquid crystal displays (LCD) and organic light-emitting diodes (OLED). In particular, the development of high-mobility ZnO-based channel materials has been proven invaluable; thus, there have been many reports of high-performance TFTs with oxide semiconductor channels such as ZnO, InZnO (IZO), ZnSnO (ZTO), and InGaZnO (IGZO). The reliability of oxide TFTs can be improved by examining more stable oxide channel materials. In the present study, we investigated the effects of an ALD-deposited water vapor permeation barrier on the stability of ZnO and HfZnO (HZO) thin film transistors. The device without the water vapor barrier films showed a large turn-on voltage shift under negative bias temperature stress. On the other hand, the suitably protected device with the lowest water vapor transmission rate showed a dramatically improved device performance. As the value of the water vapor transmission rate of the barrier films was decreased, the turn-on voltage instability reduced. The results suggest that water vapor related traps are strongly related to the instability of ZnO and HfZnO TFTs and that a proper combination of water vapor permeation barriers plays an important role in suppressing the device instability.

• Transactions on Electrical and Electronic Materials
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• v.11 no.6
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• pp.253-256
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• 2010

Different active layer thicknesses for zinc oxide (ZnO) bottom-contact thin-film transistors (TFTs) were fabricated with a poly-4-vinyphenol polymeric dielectric using injector type atomic layer deposition. The properties of the ZnO TFTs were influenced by the active thickness and width-to-length (W/L) ratio of the device. The threshold voltage of ZnO TFTs shifted positively as the active layer thickness decreased, while the subthreshold slope decreased. The W/L ratio of ZnO TFTs also affected the mobility and subthreshold slope. An optimized TFT structure exhibited an on-tooff current ratio of above 106 with solid saturation.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers Conference
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• 2008.11a
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• pp.248-249
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• 2008

ZnO (Zinc Oxide) thin film can be applied to various devices. Recently, ZnO film has been promoted in transparent TFTs (thin film transistors) because of high transparency and low temperature process. In this paper, ZnO thin films were grown on glass with the three conditions of RF sputtering power, which are 50W, 75W, 100W. Their structural, electrical and optical properties were investigated by using XRD, UV-Visible spectrometer and 4-point probes. In the ZnO film with 50W process, good crystallinity, high transmittance, and high sheet resistance were shown. In conclusion, the ZnO film with 50W can be an optimal channel layer of TFTs.

• Transactions on Electrical and Electronic Materials
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• v.18 no.3
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• pp.155-158
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• 2017

In this paper, ZnO Thin Film Transistors (TFTs) were fabricated by a sol-gel method using a low-temperature process, and their physical and electrical characteristics were analyzed. To lower the process temperature to $200^{\circ}C$, we used a zinc nitrate hydrate ($Zn(NO_3)_2{\cdot}xH_2O$) precursor. Thermo Gravimetric Analyzer (TGA) analysis showed that the zinc nitrate hydrate precursor solution had 1.5% residual organics, much less than the 6.5% of zinc acetate dihydrate at $200^{\circ}C$. In the sol-gel method, organic materials in the precursor disrupt formation of a high-quality film, and high-temperature annealing is needed to remove the organic residuals, which implies that, by using zinc nitrate hydrate, ZnO devices can be fabricated at a much lower temperature. Using an X-Ray Diffractometer (XRD) and an X-ray Photoelectron Spectrometer (XPS), $200^{\circ}C$ annealed ZnO film with zinc nitrate hydrate (ZnO (N)) was found to have an amorphous phase and much more oxygen vacancy ($V_o$) than Zn-O bonds. Despite no crystallinity, the ZnO (N) had conductance comparable to that of ZnO with zinc acetate dihydrate (ZnO (A)) annealed at $500^{\circ}C$ as in TFTs. These results show that sol-gel could be made a potent process for low-cost and flexible device applications by optimizing the precursors.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers
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• v.22 no.10
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• pp.821-825
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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 TFTs having different channel thicknesses deposited at low temperature. The ZnO films were deposited as active channel layer on $Si_3N_4/Ti/SiO_2/p-Si$ 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 was deposited as gate insulator by PE-CVD at $150^{\circ}C$. All Processes were processed below $150^{\circ}C$ which is optimal temperature for flexible display and were used dry etching method. The fabricated devices have different threshold slop, field effect mobility and subthreshold slop according to channel thickness. This characteristics are related with ZnO crystal properties analyzed with XRD and SPM. Electrical characteristics of 60 nm ZnO TFT (W/L = $20\;{\mu}m/20\;{\mu}m$) exhibited a field-effect mobility of $0.26\;cm^2/Vs$, a threshold voltage of 8.3 V, a subthreshold slop of 2.2 V/decade, and a $I_{ON/OFF}$ ratio of $7.5\times10^2$.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2013.02a
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• pp.543-543
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• 2013

Thin-film transistors (TFTs) based on oxide semiconductors have been regarded as promising alternatives for conventional amorphous and polycrystalline silicon TFTs. Oxide TFTs have several advantages, such as low temperature processing, transparency and high field-effect mobility. Lots of oxide semiconductors for example ZnO, SnO2, In2O3, InZnO, ZnSnO, and InGaZnO etc. have been researched. Particularly, zinc-tin oxide (ZTO) is suitable for channel layer of oxide TFTs having a high mobility that Sn in ZTO can improve the carrier transport by overlapping orbital. However, some issues related to the ZTO TFT electrical performance still remain to be resolved, such as obtaining good electrical contact between source/drain (S/D) electrodes and active channel layer. In this study, the bottom-gate type ZTO TFTs with staggered structure were prepared. Thin films of ZTO (40 nm thick) were deposited by DC magnetron sputtering and performed at room temperature in an Ar atmosphere with an oxygen partial pressure of 10%. After annealing the thin films of ZTO at $400^{\circ}C$ or an hour, Cu, Mo, ITO and Ti electrodes were used for the S/D electrodes. Cu, Mo, ITO and Ti (200 nm thick) were also deposited by DC magnetron sputtering at room temperature. The channel layer and S/D electrodes were defined using a lift-off process which resulted in a fixed width W of 100 ${\mu}m$ and channel length L varied from 10 to 50 ${\mu}m$. The TFT source/drain series resistance, the intrinsic mobility (${\mu}i$), and intrinsic threshold voltage (Vi) were extracted by transmission line method (TLM) using a series of TFTs with different channel lengths. And the performances of ZTO TFTs were measured by using HP 4145B semiconductor analyzer. The results showed that the Cu S/D electrodes had a high intrinsic field effect mobility and a low effective contact resistance compared to other electrodes such as Mo, ITO and Ti.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2012.02a
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• pp.187-187
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• 2012

Solution-processed metal-alloy oxides such as indium zinc oxide (IZO), indium gallium zinc oxide (IGZO) has been extensively researched due to their high electron mobility, environmental stability, optical transparency, and solution-processibility. In spite of their excellent material properties, however, there remains a challenging problem for utilizing IZO or IGZO in electronic devices: the supply shortage of indium (In). The cost of indium is high, what is more, indium is becoming more expensive and scarce and thus strategically important. Therefore, developing an alternative route to improve carrier mobility of solution-processable ZnO is critical and essential. Here, we introduce a simple route to achieve high-performance and low-temperature solution-processed ZnO thin film transistors (TFTs) by employing alkali-metal doping such as Li, Na, K or Rb. Li-doped ZnO TFTs exhibited excellent device performance with a field-effect mobility of $7.3cm^2{\cdot}V-1{\cdot}s-1$ and an on/off current ratio of more than 107. Also, in case of higher drain voltage operation (VD=60V), the field effect mobility increased up to $11.45cm^2{\cdot}V-1{\cdot}s-1$. These all alkali metal doped ZnO TFTs were fabricated at maximum process temperature as low as $300^{\circ}C$. Moreover, low-voltage operating ZnO TFTs was fabricated with the ion gel gate dielectrics. The ultra high capacitance of the ion gel gate dielectrics allowed high on-current operation at low voltage. These devices also showed excellent operational stability.