We study the effect of indium–gallium–zinc oxide (IGZO) crystallinity on oxygen vacancies that play an important role in the characteristics of IGZO-based devices. Optical and electrical measurements revealed that deep defect levels due to oxygen vacancies are largely eliminated in c-axis-aligned crystal IGZO (CAAC-IGZO), which has increased crystallinity without clear grain boundaries. In this study, the correlation between crystallinity and oxygen vacancy formation has been examined by first-principles calculations to investigate the effect of oxygen vacancies in IGZO. Furthermore, the likelihood of oxygen vacancy formation at an edge portion of single-crystal IGZO has been verified by observations of oxygen atoms at the edge region of the IGZO film by annular bright-field scanning transmission electron microscopy (ABF-STEM). Experimental and calculation results show that the high crystallinity of IGZO is important for the inhibition of oxygen vacancies.

Field-effect transistors (FETs) with c-axis-aligned crystalline In-Ga-Zn-O (CAAC-IGZO) active layers have extremely low off-state leakage current. Exploiting this feature, we investigated the application of CAAC-IGZO FETs to LSI memories. A high on-state current is required for the high-speed operation of these LSI memories. The field-effect mobility μ FE of a CAAC-IGZO FET is relatively low compared with the electron mobility of singlecrystal Si (sc-Si). In this study, we measured and calculated the channel length L dependence of μ FE for CAAC-IGZO and sc-Si FETs. For CAAC-IGZO FETs, μ FE remains almost constant, particularly when L is longer than 0.3 µm, whereas that of sc-Si FETs decreases markedly as L shortens. Thus, the μ FE difference between both FET types is reduced by miniaturization. This difference in μ FE behavior is attributed to the different susceptibilities of electrons to phonon scattering. On the basis of this result and the extremely low off-state leakage current of CAAC-IGZO FETs, we expect high-speed LSI memories with low power consumption.

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