High-Mobility Inkjet-Printed Indium-Gallium-Zinc-Oxide Thin-Film Transistors Using Sr-Doped Al₂O₃ Gate Dielectric

Materials (Basel). 2019 Mar 13;12(6):852. doi: 10.3390/ma12060852.

Abstract

In this paper, we demonstrate high-mobility inkjet-printed indium-gallium-zinc-oxide (IGZO) thin-film transistors (TFTs) using a solution-processed Sr-doped Al₂O₃ (SAO) gate dielectric. Particularly, to enhance to the electrical properties of inkjet-printed IGZO TFTs, a linear-type printing pattern was adopted for printing the IGZO channel layer. Compared to dot array printing patterns (4 × 4 and 5 × 5 dot arrays), the linear-type pattern resulted in the formation of a relatively thin and uniform IGZO channel layer. Also, to improve the subthreshold characteristics and low-voltage operation of the device, a high-k and thin (~10 nm) SAO film was used as the gate dielectric layer. Compared to the devices with SiO₂ gate dielectric, the inkjet-printed IGZO TFTs with SAO gate dielectric exhibited substantially high field-effect mobility (30.7 cm²/Vs). Moreover, the subthreshold slope and total trap density of states were also significantly reduced to 0.14 V/decade and 8.4 × 1011/cm²·eV, respectively.

Keywords: high mobility; high-k dielectric; inkjet printing; metal-oxide semiconductors; thin-film transistors.