Low turn-on voltage due to conduction band lowering effect in crystalline indium gallium zinc oxide transistors

Abstract

We found out that in an indium gallium zinc oxide (IGZO) transistor, the energy barrier in the channel region, i.e., the conduction band energy relative to the Fermi energy is lowered by electrons flowing from n+ regions under source and drain electrodes. We have named this phenomenon “conduction band lowering (CBL) effect”. Owing to this effect, even when the Fermi energy of an IGZO film gets closer to the mid-gap, a transistor formed using the film in the channel region is always turned on around a gate voltage of 0 V. In other words, by sufficiently reducing the donor concentration of the channel region, such IGZO transistors are turned on at a certain low gate voltage determined by the CBL effect and their characteristics variation can be suppressed.