Effects of Microwave Annealing on Nitrogenated Amorphous In-Ga-Zn-O Thin-Film Transistor for Low Thermal Budget Process Application

In this letter, microwave annealing technology is proposed to reduce thermal budget for the manufacture of transparent conductive oxide thin-film transistor (TFT). With microwave annealing, a nitrogenated amorphous In-Ga-Zn-O (a-IGZO:N) TFT fabricated on glass panel behaves as a carrier mobility of 4.21 cm(2)/V s and threshold voltage of 2.91 V. The performance of microwave-treated a-IGZO: N TFT with annealing process duration of 300 s is well competitive with its counterpart treated by thermal furnace annealing at 350 C for 1 h. Owing to its low thermal budget and selective heating to materials of interest, the microwave annealing has great potential for flexible oxide TFT applications.