• Journal of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers
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• v.25 no.7
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• pp.521-524
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• 2012

We report on variations of electrical properties with different active layer thickness and post-annealing temperature in amorphous In-Ga-Zn-O (IGZO) thin-film transistors (TFTs). In particular, subthreshold swing (SS) of the IGZO-TFTs was improved as increasing the active layer thickness at an given post-annealing temperature, accompanying the negative shift in turn-off voltage. However, as increasing post-annealing temperature, only turn-off voltage was shifted negatively with almost constant SS value. The effect of the active layer thickness and post-annealing temperature on electrical properties, such as SS, field effect mobility and turn-off voltage in IGZO-TFTs has been explained in terms of the variation of trap density in IGZO channel layer and at gate dielectric/IGZO interface.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers
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• v.24 no.9
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• pp.697-700
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• 2011

Thin-film transistors(TFTs) with magnesium zinc tin oxide(MZTO) channel layer are fabricated by solution-process. The threshold voltage (Vth) shifted toward positive directly with increasing Mg contents in MZTO system. Because the Mg has a lower standard electrode potential (SEP) than Sn, Zn, thus degenerate the oxygen vacancy ($V_O$). As a result, the Mg act as carrier suppressor and oxygen binder in the MZTO as well as a Vth controller.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers Conference
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• 2008.11a
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• pp.40-40
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• 2008

$InGaZnO_4$ based thin film transistors (TFTs) are of interest for large area and low cost electronics. The TFTs have strong potential for application in flat panel displays and portable electronics due to their high field effect mobility, high on/off current ratios, and high optical transparency. The application of such room temperature processed transistors, however, is often limited by the operation voltage and long-tenn stability. Therefore, attaining an optimum thickness is necessary. We investigated the thickness dependence of a room temperature grown $MgO_{0.3}BST_{0.7}$ composite gate dielectric and an $InGaZnO_4$ (IGZO) active semiconductor on the electrical characteristics of thin film transistors fabricated on a polyethylene terephthalate (PET) substrate. The TFT characteristics were changed markedly with variation of the gate dielectric and semiconductor thickness. The optimum gate dielectric and active semiconductor thickness were 300 nm and 30 nm, respectively. The TFT showed low operating voltage of less than 4 V, field effect mobility of 21.34 cm2/$V{\cdot}s$, an on/off ratio of $8.27\times10^6$, threshold voltage of 2.2 V, and a subthreshold swing of 0.42 V/dec.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers
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• v.23 no.7
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• pp.545-549
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• 2010

Low-frequency noise (1/f noise) has been measured in order to analyze the Vth instability of ZnO TFTs having two different active layer thicknesses of 40 nm and 80 nm. Under electrical stress, it was found that the TFTs with the active layer thickness of 80 nm shows smaller threshold voltage shift (${\Delta}V_{th}$) than those with thickness of 40 nm. However the ${\Delta}V_{th}$ is completely relaxed after the removal of DC stress. In order to investigate the cause of this threshold voltage instability, we accomplished the 1/f noise measurement and found that ZnO TFTs exposed the mobility fluctuation properties, in which the noise level increases as the gate bias rises and the normalized drain current noise level($S_{ID}/{I_D}^2$) of the active layer of thickness 80 nm is smaller than that of active layer thickness of thickness 40 nm. This result means that the 80 nm thickness TFTs have a smaller density of traps. This result correlated with the physical characteristics analysis performmed using XRD, which indicated that the grain size increases when the active layer thickness is made thicker. Consequently, the number of preexisting traps in the device increases with decreasing thickness of the active layer and are related closely to the $V_{th}$ instability under electrical stress.

• 한국정보디스플레이학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2009.10a
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• pp.318-321
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• 2009

We have studied transparent top gate Al-Zn-Sn-O (AZTO) TFTs with an $Al_2O_3$ protective layer (PL) on an active layer. We also fabricated a transparent 2.5 inch QCIF+AMOLED display panel using the AZTO TFT back-plane. The AZTO active layers were deposited by RF magnetron sputtering at room temperature and the PL was deposited by ALD with two different processes. The mobility and subthreshold slope were superior in the cases of the vacuum annealing and the oxygen plasma PL compared to the $O_2$ annealing and the water vapor PL, however, the bias stability was excellent for the TFTs of the $O_2$ annealing and the water vapor PL.

• Electronic Materials Letters
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• v.14 no.6
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• pp.669-677
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• 2018

In this work, the high ${\kappa}$ $Zr_xAl_{1-x}O_y$ films with a different Zr concentration have been deposited by atomic layer deposition, and the effect of Zr concentrations on the structure, chemical composition, surface morphology and dielectric properties of $Zr_xAl_{1-x}O_y$ films is analyzed by Atomic force microscopy, X-ray diffraction, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy and capacitance-frequency measurement. The effect of Zr concentrations of $Zr_xAl_{1-x}O_y$ gate insulator on the electrical property and stability under negative bias illumination stress (NBIS) or temperature stress (TS) of ZnSnO (ZTO) TFTs is firstly investigated. Under NBIS and TS, the much better stability of ZTO TFTs with $Zr_xAl_{1-x}O_y$ film as a gate insulator is due to the suppression of oxygen vacancy in ZTO channel layer and the decreased trap states originating from the Zr atom permeation at the $ZTO/Zr_xAl_{1-x}O_y$ interface. It provides a new strategy to fabricate the low consumption and high stability ZTO TFTs for application.

• Korean Journal of Metals and Materials
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• v.47 no.1
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• pp.38-43
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• 2009

To investigate the effect of RF power on the structural, optical and electrical properties of amorphous InGaZnO (a-IGZO), its thin films and TFTs were prepared by RF magnetron sputtering method with different RF power conditions of 40, 80 and 120 W at room temperature. In this study, as RF power during the deposition process increases, the RMS roughness of a-IGZO films increased from 0.26 nm to 1.09 nm, while the optical band-gap decreased from 3.28 eV to 3.04 eV. In the case of the electrical characteristics of a-IGZO TFTs, the saturation mobility increased from $7.3cm^2/Vs$ to $17.0cm^2/Vs$, but the threshold voltage decreased from 5.9 V to 3.9 V with increasing RF power. It is regarded that the increment of RF power increases the carrier concentration of the a-IGZO semiconductor layer due to the higher generation of oxygen vacancies.

• Electronic Materials Letters
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• v.14 no.6
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• pp.749-754
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• 2018

Previous studies have reported on the mechanical robustness and chemical stability of flexible amorphous indium gallium zinc oxide (a-IGZO) thin-film transistors (TFTs) on plastic substrates both in flat and curved states. In this study, we investigate how the polyimide (PI) substrate affects hydrogen concentration in the a-IGZO layer, which subsequently influences the device performance and stability under bias-temperature-stress. Hydrogen increases the carrier concentration in the active layer, but it also electrically deactivates intrinsic defects depending on its concentration. The influence of hydrogen varies between the TFTs fabricated on a glass substrate to those on a PI substrate. Hydrogen concentration is 5% lower in devices on a PI substrate after annealing, which increases the hysteresis characteristics from 0.22 to 0.55 V and also the threshold voltage shift under positive bias temperature stress by 2 ${\times}$ compared to the devices on a glass substrate. Hence, the analysis and control of hydrogen flux is crucial to maintaining good device performance and stability of a-IGZO TFTs.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers
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• v.30 no.9
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• pp.566-571
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• 2017

A soft baking process was used to enhance the electrical characteristics of solution-processed indium-zincoxide (IZO) thin-film transistors (TFTs). We demonstrate a stable soft baking process using a hot plate in air to maintain the electrical stability and improve the electrical performance of IZO TFTs. These oxide transistors exhibited good electrical performance; a field-effect mobility of $7.9cm^2/Vs$, threshold voltage of 1.4 V, sub-threshold slope of 0.5 V/dec, and a current on/off ratio of $2.9{\times}10^7$ were measured. To investigate the static response of our solutionprocessed IZO TFTs, simple resistor load type inverters were fabricated by connecting a resistor (5 or $10M{\Omega}$). Our IZO TFTs, which were manufactured using the soft baking process at a baking temperature of $120^{\circ}C$, performed well at the operating voltage, and are therefore a good candidate for use in advanced logic circuits and transparent display backplanes.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers Conference
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• 2010.06a
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• pp.357-357
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• 2010

The electrical characteristics of ZnO thin film transistor (TFT) were investigated. ZnO thin layer was deposited by DC sputtering method and TFTs with ZnO channel layer were fabricated. On/off current ratio and saturated drain current of fabricated devices were improved by annealing in nitrogen ambient at various temperatures. As a result, the electrical characteristics of ZnO TFT were improved by post annealing in nitrogen ambient and it is important to optimize the annealing conditions for ZnO TFT fabrication.