Device Performance Improvement of Transparent Thin-Film Transistors With a Ti-Doped GaZnO/InGaZnO/Ti-Doped GaZnO Sandwich Composite-Channel Structure

Abstract

In this paper, two transparent thin-film transistors (TFTs) with distinct channel designs were fabricated. The first was a single-channel TFT (SC-TFT) with a typical 50-nm-thick amorphous indium-gallium-zinc oxide (a-IGZO) layer, and the second was a sandwich composite-channel TFT (CC-TFT) comprising three layers of 10-/30-/10-nm-thick Ti-doped GaZnO (GTZO)/a-IGZO/GTZO. In the CC-TFT, the bottom GTZO thin film in the composite channel exhibited a highly smooth surface, serving as a buffer template for superior IGZO channel layer thin-film growth. The top GTZO thin film had a high carrier concentration and served as both a carrier supplement and passivation layer for reducing the adsorption of moisture and oxygen molecules. The studies of material quality indicated that the CC-TFT exhibited improved a-IGZO thin-film quality; relative to the SC-TFT, the oxygen vacancy concentration of the composite structure was reduced from 25.1% to 18.2%. The CC-TFT demonstrated a high level of device performance, exhibiting an excellent field-effect mobility of 14.1 cm <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2</sup> V·s, subthreshold swing of 0.33 V/decade, off current of 2.92 × 10 <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">-12</sup> A, threshold voltage of 1.7 V, and on-off current ratio of 3.95 × 10 <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">7</sup> . Stable device operation with nearly unaltered device characteristics was observed following a bias-stress test.