Abstract
In thin film technology, future semiconductor and display products with high performance, high density, large area, and ultra high definition with three-dimensional functionalities require high performance thin film transistors (TFTs) with high stability. Zinc oxynitride, a composite of zinc oxide and zinc nitride, has been conceded as a strong substitute to conventional semiconductor film such as silicon and indium gallium zinc oxide due to high mobility value. However, zinc oxynitride has been suffered from poor reproducibility due to relatively low binding energy of nitrogen with zinc, resulting in the instability of composition and its device performance. Here we performed post argon plasma process on zinc oxynitride film, forming nano-crystalline structure in stable amorphous matrix which hampers the reaction of oxygen with zinc. Therefore, material properties and device performance of zinc oxynitride are greatly enhanced, exhibiting robust compositional stability even exposure to air, uniform phase, high electron mobility, negligible fast transient charging and low noise characteristics. Furthermore, We expect high mobility and high stability zinc oxynitride customized by plasma process to be applicable to a broad range of semiconductor and display devices.
Highlights
Annealing[3,6,11,15,39], high pressure annealing,[40] ultra− violet light exposure and plasma process[41,42] Among these processes, low temperature annealing process has been widely used for display devices due to low temperature thermal budget it is insufficient to perfectly cure the defects located in the interface as well as the bulk material
The HR− TEM image and nano− beam diffraction pattern show the presence of a similar interplane spacing distance for the hexagonal zinc oxide and cubic zinc nitride phases, which impedes to verify the exact ratio of the zinc oxynitride structural composition
Additional information regarding the chemical state of the zinc oxynitride film was obtained from the X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) Auger spectrum, as presented in Supporting Information 3, which revealed that the film is composed of the zinc nitride, zinc oxynitride, and zinc oxide species
Summary
Annealing[3,6,11,15,39], high pressure annealing,[40] ultra− violet light exposure and plasma process[41,42] Among these processes, low temperature annealing process has been widely used for display devices due to low temperature thermal budget it is insufficient to perfectly cure the defects located in the interface as well as the bulk material. For high pressure annealing process, the sample needs to be loaded at room temperature pressure and temperature set to a process condition. It requires long ramp-up and ramp-down time up to a few hours. We report materials, chemical and structural characteristics of argon plasma − treated zinc oxynitride via X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) and transmission electron microscopy. In order to solve the instability of zinc oxynitride film, we performed argon plasma treatment on zinc oxynitride, forming stable nano− crystalline phase embedded in amorphous matrix which retards the reaction of oxygen with zinc oxynitride and enhancing electrical and device characteristics of zinc oxynitride TFT. The argon plasma process enables to realize high stable, high performance and low noise zinc oxynitride TFT; this will be an important process towards the realization of − generation high− performance TFT
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