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The instability of the gate bias and drain bias stresses is observed at high temperature in amorphous InGaZnO thin-film transistors (a-IGZO TFTs). The transfer characteristics of a-IGZO TFTs at different temperatures are also investigated in this paper. The transfer curve exhibits an apparent subthreshold current stretchout phenomenon at high temperature. The stretchout phenomenon becomes more serious with the increase of the temperature. In addition, thermally induced holes are accumulated by the negative gate voltage and get trapped in the gate dielectric or at the dielectric/channel interface at high temperature. The negative threshold voltage shifts with stress time and this is because the trapped holes induce more electrons. For drain bias stress at high temperature, the transfer curve exhibits an apparent shift during drain bias stress at high temperature compared with the same at room temperature. At high temperature, thermally induced holes are trapped in the gate insulator, especially near the drain region. Capacitance-voltage measurements have been used to prove the nonuniform hole-trapping phenomenon. Furthermore, the simulation of the capacitance-voltage and current-voltage curves also have been applied to confirm the hole-trapping distribution. The obtained results clarify that the instability is caused by nonuniform hole-trapping phenomenon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An abnormal subthreshold leakage current is observed at high temperature, which causes a notable stretch-out phenomenon in amorphous InGaZnO thin film transistors (a-IGZO TFTs). This is due to trap-induced thermal-generated holes accumulating at the source region, which leads to barrier lowering on the source side and causes an apparent subthreshold leakage current. In order to obtain superior thermal stability performance of a-IGZO TFTs, conducting N2O plasma treatment on active layer was expected to avert defects generation during SiO2 deposition process. Reducing defects generation not only suppresses subthreshold current stretch-out phenomenon but also significantly improves the bias stress stability in a-IGZO TFTs at high temperature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abnormal subthreshold leakage current is observed at high temperature in amorphous InGaZnO thin-film transistors. The transfer curve exhibits an apparent subthreshold current stretch-out phenomenon that becomes more serious with increasing temperatures. The negative bias temperature instability experiment has been used to prove high-temperature-induced hole generation. Furthermore, the transfer characteristics with different drain voltages have been also used to confirm the status of hole accumulation. These pieces of evidence clearly defined the stretch-out phenomenon, which is caused by thermal-induced hole generation and accumulation at the source region that leads to source-side barrier lowering. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The on-current decrease phenomenon is observed after erasing operation in the silicon–oxide–nitride–oxide–silicon thin-film transistors (TFTs) with lightly doped drain (LDD) structure. As nonvolatile memory, when the TFT is programmed again, the on-current decrease phenomenon can be recovered. The on-current decrease and recovery are explained by the energy band diagrams at different drain biases. The explanation implies that this phenomenon only appears in the device with LDD structure, but not in the device without LDD structure, which is experimentally verified. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: In this research, paraffin wax is employed as the passivation layer of the bottom gate amorphous indium–gallium–zinc oxide thin-film transistors (a-IGZO TFTs), and it is formed by sol–gel process in the atmosphere. The high yield and low cost passivation layer of sol–gel process technology has attracted much attention for current flat-panel-display manufacturing. Comparing with passivation-free a-IGZO TFTs, passivated devices exhibit a superior stability against positive gate bias stress in different ambient gas, demonstrating that paraffin wax shows gas-resisting characteristics for a-IGZO TFTs application. Furthermore, light-induced stretch-out phenomenon for paraffin wax passivated device is suppressed. This superior stability of the passivated device was attributed to the reduced total density of states (DOS) including the interfacial and semiconductor bulk trap densities. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: N2O plasma treatment suppressed the temperature-dependent sub-threshold leakage current of amorphous indium–gallium–zinc-oxide thin film transistors (a-IGZO TFTs). For untreated devices, the transfer curve exhibited abnormal electrical properties at high temperature. The abnormal electrical properties are explained by the energy band diagrams for both forward and reverse sweep. Above 400K, holes can be generated from trap-assisted transition, and drift to the source side which induces source barrier lowering. The source side barrier lowering enhances electron injection from the source to channel and causes an apparent sub-threshold leakage current. This phenomenon, which is experimentally verified, only appears in the device without N2O plasma treatment, but not in the device with N2O plasma treatment. The results suggested that the density of states for a-IGZO with N2O plasma treatment is much lower than that without plasma treatment. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: This study investigates the temperature-dependent memory characteristics of polycrystalline silicon thin-film transistors with oxide/nitride/oxide stack gate dielectrics and N+ poly-Si gate structures for nonvolatile memory application. As the device was programmed by Fowler–Nordheim tunneling at high temperature, some electrons captured in shallow traps could obtain enough thermal energy to de-trap to the gate, resulting in low programming efficiency. As the programming time increases, the hole injection through the blocking oxide from the gate would further lead the threshold voltage to decrease. In addition, the retention characteristic of the device programmed at higher temperature exhibits better charge storage ability. Because the electrons trapped in the shallow traps of the nitride layer can be easily de-trapped when temperature rises, the memory characteristics are mainly dominated by charges stored in the deep traps. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]