We have fabricated poly-silicon-based thin film transistors (TFTs) on glass substrates, and achieved ultra-low power consumption by driving at 1 V. The gate oxide layer has a 10 nm thick stacked structure with a 1.4 nm interfacial SiO 2 layer formed by the nitric acid oxidation of silicon (NAOS) method and a 8.6 nm SiO 2 layer formed by a plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD) method. The dynamic power consumption ratio of the NAOS-TFTs is 1/144 of that for the currently commercial TFTs with the driving voltage of 12 V and 80 nm gate oxide. The off-current decreases by ∼2 orders of magnitude by insertion of the ultra-thin NAOS SiO 2 layer. The off-current decrease is attributed to i) blocking of the gate leakage current by the NAOS SiO 2 layer, and ii) improvement of the quality of the deposited oxide on the NAOS SiO 2 layer because of better nucleation, and consequently, the high on/off ration exceeding 10 9 is achieved. Low power consumption is one of the most important issues for mobile products with batteries. System liquid crystal displays (LCDs) are widely used for popular mobile electronic products such as smart phones, e-books, and personal digital assistance (PDAs) because of their low power consumption.The dynamic consumed power of a TFT, P, is expressed aswhere f is a signal frequency, C is a charging and discharging capacitance, and V is a driving voltage. Therefore, the consumed power can be decreased most effectively by reducing the driving voltage, which is approximately proportional to a gate oxide thickness. The decrease in the gate insulator thickness makes it possible not only to decrease the consumed power but also to miniaturize TFTs, which greatly improves electrical characteristics of TFTs.
2Thermal oxidation is unavailable for TFT production because of the use of glass substrates with low softening temperature of ∼500• C. Consequently, a gate oxide layer in poly-crystalline Si (poly-Si)-based TFTs is usually formed by the plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD) method using tetraethyl orthosilicate (TEOS). [3][4][5][6] However, deposition methods have following demerits: i) interface state densities are high due to incomplete interfacial chemical bonds and presence of contaminants before deposition, 7,8 ii) bulk characteristics are poor due to imperfect structure including small SiO 2 particles which were originally formed in the gas phase and C and OH contaminants, 9,10 and due to poor nucleation of an SiO 2 layer on polySi surfaces compared to that on oxide surfaces, iii) the oxide layer thickness is not uniform on rough poly-Si surfaces due to formation of ridge structure arising from laser annealing of amorphous-Si (a-Si) films to crystallize.
11Extensive studies have been performed for developing direct Si oxidation methods at low temperatures including plasma oxidation, 12,13 photo-oxidation, 14,15 ozone oxidation, 16,17 metalpromoted oxidation, 18,19 etc. We have developed a low temperature direct Si oxidation method, i.e., the chemical oxidation method called ...