High Mobility a-IGZO TFT with Nano-Dots Doping

Wu-Wei Tsai1, Hsiao-Wen Zan*1,

Chia-Hsin Chen1, Chuang-Chuang Tsai1, and Hsin-Fei Meng2
1
Department of Photonics and Institute of Electro-Optical Engineering, National Chiao Tung
University and 2Institute of Physics, National Chiao Tung University
1001 Ta Hsueh Rd, HsinChu, Taiwan
*TEL: +886-3-5131305, FAX: +886-3-5737681, e-mail: hsiaowen@mail.nctu.edu.tw
Abstract layer at room temperature. Then, 420nm-poly(4-vinyl
A high mobility (~79 cm2/Vs) amorphous In-Ga-Zn-O phenol)(PVP) is deposited and annealing for 1hr to serve as
(a-IGZO) thin-film transistors (TFTs) with high output the insulator. The surface of PVP is coated by spontaneous
driving current has been demonstrated. We used a new distributed polystyrene spheres (Merck, K6-020) with
structure with nano-dots doping on the channel of different concentrations as shown by the scanning electron
semiconductor devices. This device is proposed to increase microscope (SEM) images in Fig. 2(b). A 100 nm aluminum
the field-effect mobility 17 times larger than that of the is deposited as gate electrode. After removing the polystyrene
control sample. The influence of dots concentration and the spheres by an adhesive tape (Scotch, 3M), the PVP at sites
doping concentration on device characteristics were without Al coverage is removed by 9 min 150 W O2 plasma
investigated. In addition, we also studied the bottom gate treatment. The a-IGZO under the porous gate electrode is
treated by Ar plasma to increase the doping concentration.
device with NDD. We successfully demonstrate an effective
Finally, a 100 nm-thick Al is deposited through a shadow
and simple concept to improve device characteristics.
mask to form the source and drain contacts. The SEM image
of the cross sectional view of the TG-NDD device is shown in
1. Introduction Fig. 2(c). As shown in Fig. 3(a), the resistivity of the a-IGZO
With a high mobility (>10 cm2/Vs) and a low threshold thin film is drastically reduced from >105 Ωcm to 3.85 Ωcm
voltage (< 5 V) under low temperature process, amorphous after Ar plasma treatment. Park et al.[5] proposed that during
In-Ga-Zn-O thin-film transistors (a-IGZO TFTs) draw a lot of Ar plasma treatment, the net electron carrier concentration of
attentions due to their applications on flexible display, level the a-IGZO thin films is rapidly increased compared to the
shifter, drivers, or the pixel driving circuit for active-matrix as-deposited a-IGZO film due to the oxygen deficient IGZO
organic-light-emitting-diode (OLED) display. [1-3]. Electron stoichiometry rather than the compositional change of the In,
mobilities of most reported a-IGZO TFTs are smaller than 35 Ga, and Zn cations.
cm2/Vs. When high-k gate dielectric or multilayer gate High conductivity IGZO
insulator is used, mobility can be as high as 62 or 124 cm2/Vs, (a) (b)
Al(Gate)
respectively [3,4]. In this report, a new method named as the Al(Gate)
nano-dots doping (NDD) is proposed to increase electron Al(D) PVP Al(S) PVP
mobility to be 17 times larger than the control. In addition, IGZO IGZO
self-aligned structure eliminates the overlaps between gate Glass Glass
electrode and source/drain contacts to suppress the parasitic
Top gate(TG) devices
capacitance and to enable a faster response. The influences of
(c) (d)
the proposed NDD treatment on conventional bottom-gate
a-IGZO TFT are also investigated. A 2-times improvement on
electron mobility by NDD treatment is observed. IGZO IGZO
SiNx SiNx
2. Experiment Si-P+ Si-P+
The proposed nano-dots doping (NDD) is realized by using Bottom gate(BG) devices
Ar plasma to treat the channel region through a porous hard
mask. Top-gate (TG) and bottom-gate (BG) structures with Fig. 1 Schematic device structures. (a) and (b) is top gate (TG) of
NDD and without NDD (named STD in this paper) are a-IGZO TFTs without and with NDD；(c) and (d) is bottom gate
fabricated. Four device structures (TG-STD, TG-NDD, (BG) of a-IGZO TFTs without and with NDD.
BG-STD, BG-NDD) are depicted in Fig. 1. The channel
width and length are 3000μm and 500μm, respectively. 3. Results and Discussion
Process flow to fabricate TG-NDD is shown in Fig. 2(a). For A. The comparison between TG-STD and
BG-NDD, process flow is the same as TG-NDD while the TG-NDD a-IGZO TFTs with different dots
glass substrate is replaced by a 100-nm silicon nitride capped
heavily-doped silicon substrate. As shown in Fig. 2, a concentration
35-nm-thick a-IGZO (3-in. circular target: In:Ga:Zn = 1:1:1 The transfer characteristics of TG-STD and TG-NDD
at%) is deposited by radio-frequency (RF) sputtering onto devices with different dots concentration are shown in Fig.
glass substrate through a shadow mask to form the active 3(b). The device performance is improved when the dots
concentration is increased. Typical parameters are listed in
the inset of Fig. 3(b). Devices with high-density dots doping B. The influence of doping concentration on
(TG-NDD with PS of 0.8w.t%) exhibit high mobility (~79 BG-NDD a-IGZO TFT
cm2/Vs). The transfer characteristics of BG a-IGZO TFTs with
(a) Polystyrene sphere (b) and without NDD are shown in Fig. 4. The mobility can be
improved over 10 times with NDD. However, the leakage
0.2 w.t% current of off state is rapidly increased while the Ar plasma
PVP PVP treatment time is over 3 min. The leakage path is from the
IGZO IGZO back channel due to the enhanced conductivity of back
Glass Glass channel by Ar treatment. Typical parameters are listed in
Table 2. The mobility is 13.2 cm2/Vs and the on/off ratio is
Remove 2.1×109.
Gate 0.8 w.t%
PS spheres 10-2
BG-STD Ar treat 2mins
10-3 BG-NDD Ar treat 2mins
PVP 10-4 BG-NDD Ar treat 3mins
IGZO IGZO
Glass Glass 10-5
10-6
10-7
(c)

ID (A)
10-8
High conductivity
Al(D) Al(S) Al(100nm) 10-9 PVP
PVP(400nm)
10-10 IGZO
IGZO IGZO IGZO(50nm) SiNx
Si-P+
Glass Glass 10-11
10-12 IGZO
10-13 SiNx
Fig. 2 (a) The process flow of the TG-NDD a-IGZO TFT (b) SEM Si-P+
images of 0.2 w.t% and 0.8w.t% polystyrene spheres with diameters 10-14
of 200nm on the substrate. (c) SEM image of the cross sectional -20 -10 0 10 20 30
view of the TG-NDD a-IGZO TFTs. Vg-Vt (V)

6 Fig. 4 The transfer characteristics of BG-NDD TFTs with and

10 without nano-dots doping.
10
5 (a)
Resistivity (cm)

4
10 4. Conclusion
10
3 A new structure of a-IGZO TFT with nano-meter-scale dotted
channel doping is proposed. With a simple process, mobility
2
10 of a-IGZO TFT becomes 17 times larger than control and
1
3.85  cm reaches 79 cm2/Vs. The proposed NDD concept is verified in
10
a-IGZO TFTs, and is promising for many other devices like
0
10 organic TFTs.
-1
10
0 50 100 150 200 250 300 5. Acknowledgements
Ar plasma time (sec) This work is supported by the National Science
10-3
TG - STD Council of Taiwan under Contract No. NSC
10-4 TG - NDD (PS 0.2w.t%) (b) 99-2628-E-009-010.
TG - NDD (PS 0.8w.t%)
10-5

10-6
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10-7
ID(A)

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