Boosting carrier mobility and stability in indium–zinc–tin oxide thin-film transistors through controlled crystallization

We investigated the effect of film thickness (geometrical confinement) on the structural evolution of sputtered indium-zinc-tin oxide (IZTO) films as high mobility n-channel semiconducting layers during post-treatment at different annealing temperatures ranging from 350 to 700 °C. Different thicknesses result in IZTO films containing versatile phases, such as amorphous, low-, and high-crystalline structures even after annealing at 700 °C. A 19-nm-thick IZTO film clearly showed a phase transformation from initially amorphous to polycrystalline bixbyite structures, while the ultra-thin film (5 nm) still maintained an amorphous phase. Transistors including amorphous and low crystalline IZTO films fabricated at 350 and 700 °C show reasonable carrier mobility (µ(FE)) and on/off current ratio (I(ON/OFF)) values of 22.4–35.9 cm(2) V(−1) s(−1) and 1.0–4.0 × 10(8), respectively. However, their device instabilities against positive/negative gate bias stresses (PBS/NBS) are unacceptable, originating from unsaturated bonding and disordered sites in the metal oxide films. In contrast, the 19-nm-thick annealed IZTO films included highly-crystalline, 2D spherulitic crystallites and fewer grain boundaries. These films show the highest µ(FE) value of 39.2 cm(2) V(−1) s(−1) in the transistor as well as an excellent I(ON/OFF) value of 9.7 × 10(8). Simultaneously, the PBS/NBS stability of the resulting transistor is significantly improved under the same stress condition. This promising superior performance is attributed to the crystallization-induced lattice ordering, as determined by highly-crystalline structures and the associated formation of discrete donor levels (~ 0.31 eV) below the conduction band edge.