Interface tailoring through the supply of optimized oxygen and hydrogen to semiconductors for highly stable top-gate-structured high-mobility oxide thin-film transistors.

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Self-aligned structured oxide thin-film transistors (TFTs) are appropriate candidates for use in the backplanes of high-end displays. Although SiNx is an appropriate candidate for use in the gate insulators (GIs) of high-performance driving TFTs, direct deposition of SiNx on top of high-mobility oxide semiconductors is impossible due to significant hydrogen (H) incorporation. In this study, we used AlOx deposited by thermal atomic layer deposition (T-ALD) as the first GI, as it has good H barrier characteristics. During the T-ALD, however, a small amount of H from H2O can also be incorporated into the adjacent active layer. In here, we performed O2 or N2O plasma treatment just prior to the T-ALD process to control the carrier density, and utilized H to passivate the defects rather than generate free carriers. While the TFT fabricated without plasma treatment exhibited conductive characteristics, both O2 and N2O plasma-treated TFTs exhibited good transfer characteristics, with a Vth of 2 V and high mobility (∼30 cm2 V−1 s−1). Although the TFT with a plasma-enhanced atomic layer deposited (PE-ALD) GI exhibited reasonable on/off characteristics, even without any plasma treatment, it exhibited poor stability. In contrast, the O2 plasma-treated TFT with T-ALD GI exhibited outstanding stability, i.e., a Vth shift of 0.23 V under positive-bias temperature stress for 10 ks and a current decay of 1.2% under current stress for 3 ks. Therefore, the T-ALD process for GI deposition can be adopted to yield high-mobility, high-stability top-gate-structured oxide TFTs under O2 or N2O plasma treatment.