High-Performance Thin Film Transistor with an Neodymium-Doped Indium Zinc Oxide/Al(2)O(3) Nanolaminate Structure Processed at Room Temperature

In this work, a high-performance thin film transistor with an neodymium-doped indium zinc oxide (Nd:IZO) semiconductor via a room temperature approach and adopting the Nd:IZO/Al(2)O(3) nanolaminate structure was investigated. The effects of the ultrathin Al(2)O(3) layer and the thickness of Nd:IZO layer in the nanolaminate structure on the improvement of electrical performance and stability of thin film transistors (TFTs) were systematically studied. Besides the carrier movement confined along the near-channel region, driven by the Al(2)O(3) layer under an electrical field, the high performance of the TFT is also attributed to the high quality of the 8-nm-thick Nd:IZO layer and the corresponding optimal Nd:IZO/Al(2)O(3) interface, which reduce the scattering effect and charge trapping with strong M–O bonds in bulk and the back-channel surface of Nd:IZO, according to the X-ray reflectivity (XRR), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), and micro-wave photo conductivity decay (μ-PCD) results. As a result, the Nd:IZO/Al(2)O(3) TFT exhibits an outstanding performance, with a high μ(sat) of 32.7 cm(2)·V(−1)·s(−1), an I(on)/I(off) of 1.9 × 10(8), and a low subthreshold swing (SS) value of 0.33 V·dec(−1), which shows great potential for the room temperature fabrication of TFTs in high-resolution or high-frame-rate displays by a scalable, simple, and feasible approach.