Scientific Reports (Nov 2022)

Impact of pre-annealing process on electrical properties and stability of indium zinc oxide thin-film transistors

  • Han-Lin Zhao,
  • Gergely Tarsoly,
  • Fei Shan,
  • Xiao-Lin Wang,
  • Jae-Yun Lee,
  • Yong Jin Jeong,
  • Sung-Jin Kim

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-24093-w
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 12, no. 1
pp. 1 – 7

Abstract

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Abstract This paper examined the effects of no treatment versus plasma treatment, and femtosecond laser irradiation as pre-annealing processes on indium zinc oxide (IZO) films and annealing at high temperatures. The plasma pre-annealed multilayer stacked IZO TFTs showed better electrical properties with mobility enhancement from 2.45 to 7.81 cm2/Vs, but exhibited diminished on–off current ratio (Ion/Ioff). The IZO thin-film transistor (TFT) prepared with femtosecond laser pre-annealing with low pulse energy generation (power of 3 W at 700 nm wavelength) for 100 s has also exhibited significantly improved electrical performance, the saturation mobility increased to 4.91 cm2/Vs, the Ion/Ioff ratio was enhanced from 4.5 × 105 to 2.1 × 106, the threshold voltage improved from − 1.44 to − 0.25 V, and the subthreshold swing was reduced from 1.21 to 0.61 V/dec. In conclusion, IZO TFTs with improved performance can be prepared using a femtosecond laser pre-annealing process, which has great potential for fabricating low-cost, high-performance devices.