Modeling the Evolution of Trap States with Thermal Post-deposition Treatments in Sol-gel Indium Zinc Oxide TFTs

Abstract

<div>Metal oxides have been investigated for use in displays and wearable electronics, owing to their high mobility in the amorphous state. In solution-processed oxide thin-film transistors, post-deposition thermal processing significantly change the film’s transport properties, and is essential for high-performance devices. The mobility, bias stability and trapping-detrapping related hysteresis are improved with higher processing temperatures, which is generally attributed to decreased localized states which act as electron traps. Here we develop a model to validate that post-deposition processing indeed changes the density and properties of the localized states. We obtain good agreement between this model and the experimental data measured from sol-gel indium zinc oxide TFTs. When the processing temperature increases from 300 to 500 <sup>0</sup>C, the model indicates that the trap state density in the bulk semiconductor and at the interface decrease by a factor of 5 and a factor of 3, respectively. Furthermore, the localized states become shallower, and the band mobility increases at higher processing temperatures.</div>