Highly stable amorphous zinc tin oxynitride thin film transistors under positive bias stress

Author(s)

K. M. Niang, B. C. Bayer, J. C. Meyer, A. J. Flewitt

Abstract

The stability of amorphous zinc tin oxynitride thin film transistors (a-ZTON TFTs) under positive bias stress (PBS) is investigated. Thin films are deposited by remote plasma reactive sputtering and are annealed at 300 °C in air for 1 h, after which films are confirmed to be highly amorphous by transmission electron microscopy. Typical a-ZTON TFTs exhibit a threshold voltage of 2.5 V, a field effect mobility of 3.3 cm

² V

^-1s

^-1, a sub-threshold slope of 0.55 V dec

^-1, and a switching ratio over 10

⁶. Using a thermalization energy analysis, the threshold voltage shift under PBS is analysed. A maximum energy barrier to defect conversion up to 0.91 eV is found, which is significantly greater than that of the ∼0.75 eV energy barrier for amorphous indium gallium zinc oxide and amorphous zinc tin oxide TFTs previously reported. The improved stability of these oxynitride TFTs over amorphous oxide TFTs is explained by the elimination of less stable oxygen vacancies due to the passivation of oxygen vacancies with nitrogen. The higher attempt-to-escape frequency of 10

⁸ to 10

⁹ s

^-1 in a-ZTON TFTs compared with 10

⁷ s

^-1 in amorphous oxide semiconductor TFTs, on the other hand, is attributed to the high homogeneity of the amorphous film leading to strong carrier localization in the band tails.

Organisation(s)

Physics of Nanostructured Materials

External organisation(s)

University of Cambridge

Journal

Applied Physics Letters

Volume

111

No. of pages

5

ISSN

0003-6951

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1063/1.5004514

Publication date

09-2017

Peer reviewed

Yes

Austrian Fields of Science 2012

103018 Materials physics

Keywords

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Physics and Astronomy (miscellaneous)

Portal url

https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/en/publications/highly-stable-amorphous-zinc-tin-oxynitride-thin-film-transistors-under-positive-bias-stress(6d56107e-5998-478c-b76f-fc53c21f3608).html