Work Function Tuning of Zinc–Tin Oxide Thin Films Using High-Density O2 Plasma Treatment

Abstract

Work function tuning has a significant influence on the performance of semiconductor devices, owing to the formation of potential barriers at the interface between metal-semiconductor junctions. In this work, we introduce a technique for tuning the work function of ZnSnO thin films using high-density O2 plasma treatment. The work function and chemical composition of the ZnSnO thin film surfaces were investigated with regards to plasma treatment time through UPS/XPS systems. The optical band gap was estimated using Tauc’s relationship from transmittance data. The work function of Zn0.6Sn0.4O thin film increased from 4.16 eV to 4.64 eV, and the optical band gap increased from 3.17 to 3.23 eV. The surface of Zn0.6Sn0.4O thin films showed a smooth morphology with an average of 0.65 nm after O2 plasma treatment. The O2 plasma treatment technique exhibits significant potential for application in high-performance displays in optical devices, such as thin-film transistors (TFTs), light-emitting diodes (LEDs), and solar cells.

Contact properties of a low-resistance aluminum-based electrode with metal capping layers in vertical oxide thin-film transistors

“…5(a)–(c) show the UPS-measured data of Mo, Ti, and ITO electrodes, respectively, at a high binding energy. The work function can be calculated as 33 ∅ = hν − E B (secondary cut-off),where Φ , hν , and E B represent the work function, incident photon energy, and binding energy, respectively. We considered He-I UPS with a 21.2 eV energy in our analysis.…”

Stoichiometry Dependence of Physical and Electrochemical Properties of the SnOx Film Anodes Deposited by Pulse DC Magnetron Sputtering

“…The Sn element rearrangement was likely a consequence of the high mobility [ 28 ] of the nanoscale Sn particles formed in the conversion reaction and the high mobility of Li + in the Li x Sn alloy (diffusion constants between 10 −7 and 10 −8 cm 2 /s [ 36 ]). Recently, researchers have introduced work function (WF) as a parameter to study the stability of electrodes [ 37 , 38 , 39 , 40 , 41 ]. The WF (Φ) is usually defined as the energy required to take away one electron from the Fermi level ( μ ), namely, Φ = φ − μ , where φ refers to the vacuum level.…”

Cu 2 AgInS 2 Se 2 quantum dots sensitized porous TiO 2 nanofibers as a photoanode for high‐performance quantum dot sensitized solar cell

“…From Figure 5B bandgap of CAISSe QDs is calculated to be 1.29 eV. 53 Hence, the conduction band minimum is −3.50 eV. The calculated energy band levels show that band edge alignment of CAISSe QDs and TiO 2 NFs can create a driving force that facilitates both effective photo-electron extraction and the rapid transfer of electrons from CAISSe QDs to TiO 2 NFs.…”