Membranes (Jun 2022)

Solution-Processed Silicon Doped Tin Oxide Thin Films and Thin-Film Transistors Based on Tetraethyl Orthosilicate

  • Ziyan He,
  • Xu Zhang,
  • Xiaoqin Wei,
  • Dongxiang Luo,
  • Honglong Ning,
  • Qiannan Ye,
  • Renxu Wu,
  • Yao Guo,
  • Rihui Yao,
  • Junbiao Peng

DOI
https://doi.org/10.3390/membranes12060590
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 12, no. 6
p. 590

Abstract

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Recently, tin oxide (SnO2) has been the preferred thin film material for semiconductor devices such as thin-film transistors (TFTs) due to its low cost, non-toxicity, and superior electrical performance. However, the high oxygen vacancy (VO) concentration leads to poor performance of SnO2 thin films and devices. In this paper, with tetraethyl orthosilicate (TEOS) as the Si source, which can decompose to release heat and supply energy when annealing, Si doped SnO2 (STO) films and inverted staggered STO TFTs were successfully fabricated by a solution method. An XPS analysis showed that Si doping can effectively inhibit the formation of VO, thus reducing the carrier concentration and improving the quality of SnO2 films. In addition, the heat released from TEOS can modestly lower the preparation temperature of STO films. By optimizing the annealing temperature and Si doping content, 350 °C annealed STO TFTs with 5 at.% Si exhibited the best device performance: Ioff was as low as 10−10 A, Ion/Ioff reached a magnitude of 104, and Von was 1.51 V. Utilizing TEOS as an Si source has a certain reference significance for solution-processed metal oxide thin films in the future.

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