Abstract
Amorphous metal-oxide semiconductors (AOSs) such as indium-gallium-zinc-oxide (IGZO) as an active channel have attracted substantial interests with regard to high-performance thin-film transistors (TFTs). Recently, intensive and extensive studies of flexible and/or wearable AOS-based TFTs fabricated by solution-process have been reported for emerging approaches based on device configuration and fabrication process. However, several challenges pertaining to practical and effective solution-process technologies remain to be resolved before low-power consuming AOS-based TFTs for wearable electronics can be realized. In this paper, we investigate the non-thermal annealing processes for sol-gel based metal-oxide semiconductor and dielectric films fabricated by deep ultraviolet (DUV) photo and microwave annealing at low temperature, compared to the conventional thermal annealing at high temperature. A comprehensive investigation including a comparative analysis of the effects of DUV photo and microwave annealing on the degree of metal-oxide-metal networks in amorphous IGZO and high-dielectric-constant (high-k) aluminum oxide (Al2O3) films and device performance of IGZO-TFTs in a comparison with conventional thermal annealing at 400 °C was conducted. We also demonstrate the feasibility of wearable IGZO-TFTs with Al2O3 dielectrics on solution-processed polyimide films exhibiting a high on/off current ratio of 5 × 104 and field effect mobility up to 1.5 cm2/V-s operating at 1 V. In order to reduce the health risk and power consumption during the operation of wearable electronics, the operating voltage of IGZO-TFTs fabricated by non-thermal annealing at low temperature was set below ~1 V. The mechanical stability of wearable IGZO-TFTs fabricated by an all-solution-process except metal electrodes, against cyclic bending tests with diverse radius of curvatures in real-time was investigated. Highly stable and robust flexible IGZO-TFTs without passivation films were achieved even under continuous flexing with a curvature radius of 12 mm.
Highlights
Over the past few years, amorphous indium-gallium-zinc-oxide (IGZO) has become a promising active channel material for thin-film transistors (TFTs) which have been utilized in different types of electronics, including display backplanes and sensor arrays[1,2,3]
We investigate the origin of high-quality sol-gel based Al2O3 dielectric films fabricated by DUV photo and microwave annealing at low temperature, in another comparison with conventional thermal annealing
The fabrication process flow of solution-processed IGZO-TFTs with conventional SiO2 gate dielectrics is schematically shown in Figure 1a with detail explanations in the experimental section. 200 nm thick SiO2 dielectric films thermally grown on the silicon substrates were utilized as conventional gate dielectrics
Summary
Over the past few years, amorphous indium-gallium-zinc-oxide (IGZO) has become a promising active channel material for thin-film transistors (TFTs) which have been utilized in different types of electronics, including display backplanes and sensor arrays[1,2,3]. We investigate the optimization of DUV photo and microwave annealing in an effort to realize high-quality amorphous IGZO films and characterize charge transport and device performance of IGZO-TFTs fabricated by means of the non-thermal annealing as compared to conventional thermal annealing at 400 °C. The studies on the comparative analysis of non-thermal annealing processes for sol-gel based metal-oxide semiconductor and dielectric films in which each annealing processed at low temperature (below ~200 °C) was matched still remain insufficient in terms of device performance of low-voltage operating IGZO-TFTs. we demonstrate wearable IGZO-TFTs operating at 1 V on solution-processed polyimide (PI) films through the optimized solution-process based on DUV photo annealing, which exhibited good device performance and mechanical stability in cyclic bending tests with a curvature radius of 12 mm
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