• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2012.08a
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• pp.242-242
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• 2012

Transparent oxide semiconductors are increasingly becoming one of good candidates for high efficient channel materials of thin film transistors (TFTs) in large-area display industries. Compare to the conventional hydrogenated amorphous silicon channel layers, solution processed ZnO-TFTs can be simply fabricated at low temperature by just using a spin coating method without vacuum deposition, thus providing low manufacturing cost. Furthermore, solution based oxide TFT exhibits excellent transparency and enables to apply flexible devices. For this reason, this process has been attracting much attention as one fabrication method for oxide channel layer in thin-film transistors (TFTs). But, poor electrical characteristic of these solution based oxide materials still remains one of issuable problems due to oxygen vacancy formed by breaking weak chemical bonds during fabrication. These electrical properties are expected due to the generation of a large number of conducting carriers, resulting in huge electron scattering effect. Therefore, we study a novel technique to effectively improve the electron mobility by applying environmental annealing treatments with various gases to the solution based Li-doped ZnO TFTs. This technique was systematically designed to vary a different lithium ratio in order to confirm the electrical tendency of Li-doped ZnO TFTs. The observations of Scanning Electron Microscopy, Atomic Force Microscopy, and X-ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy were performed to investigate structural properties and elemental composition of our samples. In addition, I-V characteristics were carried out by using Keithley 4,200-Semiconductor Characterization System (4,200-SCS) with 4-probe system.

• 한국정보디스플레이학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2008.10a
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• pp.1199-1202
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• 2008

High mobility bottom gate thin film transistors (TFTs) with an amorphous gallium tin zinc oxide (a-GSZO) channel layer have been produced by rf magnetron cosputtering using a gallium zinc oxide (GZO) and tin (Sn) targets. The effect of the post annealing temperatures ($200^{\circ}C$, $250^{\circ}C$ and $300^{\circ}C$) was evaluated and compared with two series of TFTs produced at room temperature and $150^{\circ}C$ during the channel deposition. From the results it was observed that the effect of pos annealing is crucial for both series of TFTs either for stability as well as for improving the electrical characteristics. The a-GSZO TFTs operate in the enhancement mode (n-type), present a high saturation mobility of $24.6\;cm^2/Vs$, a subthreshold gate swing voltage of 0.38 V/decade, a turn-on voltage of -0.5 V, a threshold voltage of 4.6 V and an $I_{ON}/I_{OFF}$ ratio of $8{\times}10^7$, satisfying all the requirements to be used in active-matrix backplane.

• Transactions on Electrical and Electronic Materials
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• v.18 no.1
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• pp.55-57
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• 2017

Amorphous oxide thin film transistors (TFTs) were fabricated with 0.5 wt% silicon doped zinc tin oxide (a-0.5SZTO) thin film deposited by radio frequency (RF) magnetron sputtering. In order to investigate the effect of annealing treatment on the electrical properties of TFTs, a-0.5SZTO thin films were annealed at three different temperatures ($300^{\circ}C$, $500^{\circ}C$, and $700^{\circ}C$ for 2 hours in a air atmosphere. The structural and electrical properties of a-0.5SZTO TFTs were measured using X-ray diffraction and a semiconductor analyzer. As annealing temperature increased from $300^{\circ}C$ to $500^{\circ}C$, no peak was observed. This provided crystalline properties indicating that the amorphous phase was observed up to $500^{\circ}C$. The electrical properties of a-0.5SZTO TFTs, such as the field effect mobility (${\mu}_{FE}$) of $24.31cm^2/Vs$, on current ($I_{ON}$) of $2.38{\times}10^{-4}A$, and subthreshold swing (S.S) of 0.59 V/decade improved with the thermal annealing treatment. This improvement was mainly due to the increased carrier concentration and decreased structural defects by rearranged atoms. However, when a-0.5SZTO TFTs were annealed at $700^{\circ}C$, a crystalline peak was observed. As a result, electrical properties degraded. ${\mu}_{FE}$ was $0.06cm^2/Vs$, $I_{ON}$ was $5.27{\times}10^{-7}A$, and S.S was 2.09 V/decade. This degradation of electrical properties was mainly due to increased interfacial and bulk trap densities of forming grain boundaries caused by the annealing treatment.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2012.02a
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• pp.466-468
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• 2012

Amorphous InGaZnO (${\alpha}$-IGZO) thin-film transistors (TFTs) are are very promising due to their potential use in thin film electronics and display drivers [1]. However, the stability of AOS-TFTs under the various stresses has been issued for the practical AOSs applications [2]. Up to now, many researchers have studied to understand the sub-gap density of states (DOS) as the root cause of instability [3]. Nomura et al. reported that these deep defects are located in the surface layer of the ${\alpha}$-IGZO channel [4]. Also, Kim et al. reported that the interfacial traps can be affected by different RF-power during RF magnetron sputtering process [5]. It is well known that these trap states can influence on the performances and stabilities of ${\alpha}$-IGZO TFTs. Nevertheless, it has not been reported how these defect states are created during conventional RF magnetron sputtering. In general, during conventional RF magnetron sputtering process, negative oxygen ions (NOI) can be generated by electron attachment in oxygen atom near target surface and accelerated up to few hundreds eV by self-bias of RF magnetron sputter; the high energy bombardment of NOIs generates bulk defects in oxide thin films [6-10] and can change the defect states of ${\alpha}$-IGZO thin film. In this paper, we have confirmed that the NOIs accelerated by the self-bias were one of the dominant causes of instability in ${\alpha}$-IGZO TFTs when the channel layer was deposited by conventional RF magnetron sputtering system. Finally, we will introduce our novel technology named as Magnetic Field Shielded Sputtering (MFSS) process [9-10] to eliminate the NOI bombardment effects and present how much to be improved the instability of ${\alpha}$-IGZO TFTs by this new deposition method.

• 한국정보디스플레이학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2008.10a
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• pp.1001-1004
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• 2008

An advanced backplane circuit technology for AMOLED using amorphous silicon TFTs with commercial level reliability, uniformity and lifetime was recently integrated into a prototype device. Differential aging of T98>100 hrs at 200 cd/m2 brightness and >10,000hrs lifetime is demonstrated. A 2.2" QVGA ($240{\times}320$) prototype has been developed and shown having the above-mentioned high performance.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers Conference
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• 2009.06a
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• pp.151-151
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• 2009

Recently, there has been increasing interest in amorphous oxide semiconductors to find alternative materials for an amorphous silicon or organic semiconductor layer as a channel in thin film transistors(TFTs) for transparent electronic devices owing to their high mobility and low photo-sensitivity. The fabriction of amorphous oxide-based TFTs at room temperature on plastic substrates is a key technology to realize transparent flexible electronics. Amorphous oxides allows for controllable conductivity, which permits it to be used both as a transparent semiconductor or conductor, and so to be used both as active and source/drain layers in TFTs. One of the materials that is being responsible for this revolution in the electronics is indium-zinc-tin oxide(IZTO). Since this is relatively new material, it is important to study the properties of room-temperature deposited IZTO thin films and exploration in a possible integration of the material in flexible TFT devices. In this research, we deposited IZTO thin films on polyethylene naphthalate substrate at room temperature by using magnetron sputtering system and investigated their properties. Furthermore, we revealed the fabrication and characteristics of top-gate-type transparent TFTs with IZTO layers, seen in Fig. 1. The experimental results show that by varying the oxygen flow rate during deposition, it can be prepared the IZTO thin films of two-types; One a conductive film that exhibits a resistivity of $2\times10^{-4}$ ohm${\cdot}$cm; the other, semiconductor film with a resistivity of 9 ohm${\cdot}$cm. The TFT devices with IZTO layers are optically transparent in visible region and operate in enhancement mode. The threshold voltage, field effect mobility, on-off current ratio, and sub-threshold slope of the TFT are -0.5 V, $7.2\;cm^2/Vs$, $\sim10^7$ and 0.2 V/decade, respectively. These results will contribute to applications of select TFT to transparent flexible electronics.

• Journal of Information Display
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• v.6 no.2
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• pp.12-15
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• 2005

We propose a new pixel design for active matrix organic light emitting diode (AM-OLED) displays using hydrogenated amorphous silicon thin-film transistors (a-Si:H TFTs). The pixel circuit is composed of five TFTs and one capacitor, and employs only one additional control signal line. It is verified by SPICE simulation results that the proposed pixel compensates the threshold voltage shift of the a-Si:H TFTs and OLED.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers Conference
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• 2009.11a
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• pp.8-8
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• 2009

Thin-film transistors (TFTs) were fabricated using amorphous indium gallium zinc oxide (a-IGZO) channels by rf-magnetron sputtering at room temperature. We have studied the effect of oxygen partial pressure on the threshold voltage($V_{th}$) of a-IGZO TFTs. Interestingly, the $V_{th}$ value of the oxide TFTs are slightly shifted in the positive direction due to increasing $O_2$ ratio from 1.2 to 1.8%. The device performance is significantly affected by varying $O_2$ ratio, which is closely related with oxygen vacancies provide the needed free carriers for electrical conduction.

• 한국정보디스플레이학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2005.07b
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• pp.1297-1300
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• 2005

We propose a new pixel design for active matrix organic light emitting diode (AM-OLED) displays using hydrogenated amorphous silicon thin-film transistors (a-Si:H TFTs). The pixel circuit is composed of five TFTs and one capacitor, and employs only one additional control signal line. It is verified by SPICE simulation results that the proposed pixel compensates the threshold voltage shift of the a-Si:H TFTs and OLED.

• JSTS:Journal of Semiconductor Technology and Science
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• v.15 no.2
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• pp.249-254
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• 2015

Solution-derived amorphous indium-gallium-zinc oxide (a-IGZO) thin-film-transistor (TFTs) were developed using a microwave irradiation treatment at low process temperature below $300^{\circ}C$. Compared to conventional furnace-annealing, the a-IGZO TFTs annealed by microwave irradiation exhibited better electrical characteristics in terms of field effect mobility, SS, and on/off current ratio, although the annealing temperature of microwave irradiation is much lower than that of furnace annealing. The microwave irradiated TFTs showed a smaller $V_{th}$ shift under the positive gate bias stress (PGBS) and negative gate bias stress (NGBS) tests owing to a lower ratio of oxygen vacancies, surface absorbed oxygen molecules, and reduced interface trapping in a-IGZO. Therefore, microwave irradiation is very promising to low-temperature process.