Evaluation of stress stabilities in amorphous In–Ga–Zn–O thin-film transistors: Effect of passivation with Si-based resin

Abstract

Fabrication process conditions of a passivation (PV) layer correlated with stress stabilities of amorphous In–Ga–Zn–O (a-IGZO) thin-film transistors (TFTs). In etch-stop layer (ESL)-TFTs, by inserting a Si-based resin between SiNx and SiOx PV layers, the peak intensity in the photoinduced transient spectroscopy (PITS) spectrum was notably reduced. This suggested the suppression of hydrogen incorporation into a-IGZO, which led to the improvement of stability under negative bias thermal illumination stress (NBTIS). In contrast, the hydrogen-related defects in the a-IGZO were easily formed by the back-channel etch (BCE) process. Furthermore, it was found that, under NBTIS, the transfer curves of the BCE-TFTs shifted in parallel owing to the positive fixed charge located in the back channel of the a-IGZO TFTs. The hump-shaped shift increased with stress time. This is because hydrogen atoms located at the back-channel surfaces of the a-IGZO and/or PV layers were incorporated into the channel region of the BCE-TFTs and induced the hydrogen-related defects.