Search

We have investigated the gate bias stress-induced instability on the electrical properties with different pre-treatments for sol-gel derived amorphous indium gallium zinc oxide thin film transistors (a-IGZO TFTs). The device with illuminating and heating pre-treatments under the positive/negative gate bias stress in vacuum had the smallest threshold voltage shift as the stress duration increased, while the device with oxygen gas pre-treatment exhibited an obvious variation. These electrical instabilities were ascribed to the charge trapping in the gate insulator and the oxygen/water adsorption on the active layer. It indicates that the specific pre-treatment for the a-IGZO film can improve the device stability. It also provides the important information for the subsequent passivation process concerning the pre-treatment of the active layer.

This work shows the effects of post-deposition annealing atmosphere and duration on the properties of sol-gel derived amorphous indium zinc oxide thin film transistors (a-IZO TFTs). Two different post-deposition annealing atmospheres, nitrogen and oxygen, were used in this study. Experimental results showed that the O2-annealed devices showed better electrical characteristics than the N2-annealed samples. Under O2-annealing, field effect mobility was enhanced to 1.47 cm2/V s, the threshold voltage increased to -4.61 V and the subthreshold swing improved to 0.86 V/dec. Also, the transfer characteristics of a-IZO TFTs improve with annealing time. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) analysis indicated that the chemical composition of the IZO film was modified by the oxygen annealing.