For high-performance and high-lifetime flexible and wearable electronic applications, a low-temperature posttreatment method is highly expected to enhance the device performance and repair the defects induced by the low-temperature fabrication process intrinsically. Particularly, if the method can repair the traces induced by the multiple cycles of bending or deforming, it would overcome current fatal obstacles and provide a vital solution to the rapid development of flexible electronics. In this work, we propose a method to apply low-temperature supercritical CO2 fluid with a dehydration function to improve or even restore the performance of flexible amorphous indium gallium zinc oxide (a-IGZO) thin-film transistors (TFTs). After the treatment, the a-IGZO TFT exhibits 3 times improvement drivability up to 0.24 μA/μm, a smaller subthreshold swing of 0.18 V dec-1, a smaller Vth of 0.25 V, and a larger Ion/Ioff ratio of 3.8 × 107. Additionally, the posttreated a-IGZO TFTs possess relatively good uniformity and reproducibility with an on-current standard deviation of 0.047 μA/μm, and the performance of the a-IGZO TFT after the treatment remains almost unchanged even after bending 2500 times at a bending radius of 5 mm. These characteristics are attributed to the improved quality of the channel and gate dielectric. It is worth noting that when this is applied to a flexible TFT-driven organic light-emitting diode lighting system, this treatment method can restore the performance of not only the TFT but also the lighting system, even after the system has been bent more than 600 times and has failed. To date, this is the first time that the bending-track erasing function of the supercritical fluid for flexible systems has been reported, which has the potential to prolong the lifetime of flexible electronics.
Keywords: Supercritical fluid dehydration treatment; amorphous indium gallium zinc oxide; bending-restorable; chemical modification; flexible transistors.