Amorphous InGaZnO semiconductors have been rapidly developed as active charge-transport materials in thin film transistors (TFTs) because of their cost effectiveness, flexibility, and homogeneous characteristics for large-area applications. Recently, InZnSnO (IZTO) with superior mobility (higher than 20 cm2 V-1 s-1) has been suggested as a promising oxide semiconductor material for high-resolution, large-area displays. However, the electrical and physical characteristics of IZTO have not been fully characterized. In this study, thin IZTO films were grown using a novel atomic layer deposition (ALD) supercycle process consisting of alternating subcycles of single-oxide deposition. By varying the number of deposition subcycles, it was determined that the insertion of a Sn-O cycle improved the mobility and reliability of IZTO-based TFTs. Specifically, the IZTO TFT obtained using one In-O cycle, one Zn-O cycle, and one Sn-O exhibited the best performance (saturation mobility of 27.8 cm2 V-1 s-1 and threshold voltage shift of 1.8 V after applying positive-bias temperature stress conditions). Next, the production of rollable and flexible devices was demonstrated by fabricating ALD-processed IZTO TFTs on polymer substrates. The electrical characteristics of these TFTs were retained without drastic degradation for 240,000 bending cycles. These results indicate that the supercycle ALD technique is effective for synthesizing multicomponent oxide TFTs for electronic applications requiring high mobility and mechanical flexibility.
Keywords: amorphous semiconductor; band structure; flexible; n-type oxide semiconductor; thin film transistor.