• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2014.02a
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• pp.273.2-273.2
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• 2014

Sputtering process has been widely used in Si-based semiconductor industry and it is also an ideal method to deposit transparent oxide materials for thin-film transistors (TFTs). The oxide films grown at low temperature by conventional RF sputtering process are typically amorphous state with low density including a large number of defects such as dangling bonds and oxygen vacancies. Those play a crucial role in the electron conduction in transparent electrode, while those are the origin of instability of semiconducting channel in oxide TFTs due to electron trapping. Therefore, post treatments such as high temperature annealing process have been commonly progressed to obtain high reliability and good stability. In this work, the scheme of electron-assisted RF sputtering process for high quality transparent oxide films was suggested. Through the additional electron supply into the plasma during sputtering process, the working pressure could be kept below $5{\times}10-4Torr$. Therefore, both the mean free path and the mobility of sputtered atoms were increased and the well ordered and the highly dense microstructure could be obtained compared to those of conventional sputtering condition. In this work, the physical properties of transparent oxide films such as conducting indium tin oxide and semiconducting indium gallium zinc oxide films grown by electron-assisted sputtering process will be discussed in detail. Those films showed the high conductivity and the high mobility without additional post annealing process. In addition, oxide TFT characteristics based on IGZO channel and ITO electrode will be shown.

• 한국정보디스플레이학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2009.10a
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• pp.998-1001
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• 2009

A new flexible TFT backplane structure with improved mechanical reliability is proposed. Amorphous indium-gallium-zinc-oxide (a-IGZO) thin film transistors based on this structure have been fabricated on a polyimide substrate, and the resultant mechanical durability has been evaluated in a cyclic bending test. The panel can withstand 10,000 bending cycles at a bending radius of 5 mm without any noticeable TFT degradation. After 10K bending cycles, the change of threshold voltage, mobility, sub-threshold slope, and gate leakage current were only -0.22V, -0.13$cm^2$/V-s, -0.05V/decade, and $-3.05{\times}10^{-13}A$, respectively.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers
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• v.33 no.4
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• pp.281-285
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• 2020

Oxide semiconductor devices have become increasingly important because of their high mobility and good uniformity. The channel length of oxide semiconductor thin film transistors (TFTs) also shrinks as the display resolution increases. It is well known that reducing the channel length of a TFT is detrimental to the current saturation because of drain-induced barrier lowering, as well as the movement of the pinch-off point. In an organic light-emitting diode (OLED), the lack of current saturation in the driving TFT creates a major problem in the control of OLED current. To obtain improved current saturation in short channels, we fabricated indium gallium zinc oxide (IGZO) TFTs with single gate and double gate structures, and evaluated the electrical characteristics of both devices. For the double gate structure, we connected the bottom gate electrode to the source electrode, so that the electric potential of the bottom gate was fixed to that of the source. We denote the double gate structure with the bottom gate fixed at the source potential as the BGFP (bottom gate with fixed potential) structure. For the BGFP TFT, the current saturation, as determined by the output characteristics, is better than that of the conventional single gate TFT. This is because the change in the source side potential barrier by the drain field has been suppressed.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2016.02a
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• pp.304.2-304.2
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• 2016

Hafnium oxide-aluminum oxide (HfO2-Al2O3) dielectric films have been fabricated by Pulsed Laser Deposition (PLD), and their properties are studied in comparison with HfO2 films. As a gate dielectric of the TFT, in spite of its high dielectric constant, HfO2 has a small energy band gap and microcrystalline structure with rough surface characteristics. When fabricated by the device, it has the drawback of generating a high leakage current. In this study, the HfAlO films was obtained by Pulsed Laser Deposition with HfO2-Al2O3 target(chemical composition of (HfO2)86wt%(Al2O3)14wt%). The characteristics of the thin Film have been investigated by x-ray diffraction (XRD), atomic force microscopy (AFM) and spectroscopic ellipsometer (SE) analyses. The X-ray diffraction studies confirmed that the HfAlO has amorphous structure. The RMS value can be compared to the surface roughness via AFM analysis, it showed HfAlO thin Film has more lower properties than HfO2. The energy band gap (Eg) deduced by spectroscopic ellipsometer was increased. HfAlO films was expected to improved the interface quality between channel and gate insulator. Apply to an oxide thin Film Transistors, HfAlO may help improve the properties of device.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2015.08a
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• pp.192.1-192.1
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• 2015

We demonstrated the nonvolatile memory functionality of nano-crystalline silicon (nc-Si) and InGaZnOxide (IGZO) thin film transistors (TFTs) using mobile protons that are generated by very short time hydrogen neutral beam (H-NB) treatment in gate insulator (SiO2). The whole memory fabrication process kept under $50^{\circ}C$ (except SiO2 deposition process; $300^{\circ}C$). These devices exhibited reproducible hysteresis, reversible switching, and nonvolatile memory behaviors in comparison with those of the conventional FET devices. We also executed hydrogen treatment in order to figure out the difference of mobile proton generation between PECVD and H-NB CVD that we modified. Our study will further provide a vision of creating memory functionality and incorporating proton-based storage elements onto a probability of next generation flexible memorable electronics such as low power consumption flexible display panel.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2012.02a
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• pp.170-170
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• 2012

최근 주목받고 있는 amorphous InGaZnO (a-IGZO) thin film transistors (TFTs)는 수소가 첨가된 비정질 실리콘 TFT (a-Si;H)에 비해 비정질 상태에서도 높은 이동도와 뛰어난 전기적, 광학적 특성에 의해 큰 주목을 받고 있다. 또한 넓은 밴드갭에 의해 가시광 영역에서 투명한 특성을 보이고, 플라스틱 기판 위에서 구부러지는 성질에 의해 플랫 패널 디스플레이나 능동 유기 발광 소자 (AM-OLED), 투명 디스플레이에 응용되고 있다. 하지만, 실제 디스플레이가 동작하는 동안 스위칭 TFT는 백라이트 또는 외부에서 들어오는 빛에 지속적으로 노출되게 되고, 이 빛에 의해서 TFT 소자의 신뢰성에 악영향을 끼친다. 또한, 디스플레이가 장시간 동안 동작 하면 내부 온도가 상승하게 되고 이에 따른 온도에 의한 신뢰성 문제도 동시에 고려되어야 한다. 특히, 실제 AM-LCD에서 스위칭 TFT는 양의 게이트 전압보다 음의 게이트 전압에 의해서 약 500 배 가량 더 긴 시간의 스트레스를 받기 때문에 음의 게이트 전압에 대한 신뢰성 평가는 대단히 중요한 이슈이다. 스트레스에 의한 문턱 전압의 변화는 게이트 절연막과 반도체 채널 사이의 계면 또는 게이트 절연막의 벌크 트랩에 의한 것으로 게이트 절연막의 선택에 따라서 신뢰성을 효과적으로 개선시킬 수 있다. 본 연구에서는 적층된 $Si_3N_4/SiO_2$ (NO 구조) 이중층 구조를 게이트 절연막으로 사용하고, 완충층의 역할을 하는 $SiO_2$막의 두께에 따른 소자의 전기적 특성 및 신뢰성을 평가하였다. a-IGZO TFT 소자의 전기적 특성과 신뢰성 평가를 위하여 간단한 구조의 pseudo-MOS field effect transistor (${\Psi}$-MOSFET) 방법을 이용하였다. 제작된 소자의 최적화된 $SiO_2$ 완충층의 두께는 20 nm이고 $12.3cm^2/V{\cdot}s$의 유효 전계 이동도, 148 mV/dec의 subthreshold swing, $4.52{\times}10^{11}cm^{-2}$의 계면 트랩, negative bias illumination stress에서 1.23 V의 문턱 전압 변화율, negative bias temperature illumination stress에서 2.06 V의 문턱 전압 변화율을 보여 뛰어난 전기적, 신뢰성 특성을 확인하였다.