Analysis of the contact resistance in amorphous InGaZnO thin film transistors

Contact resistance has great impact on the performance of oxide thin film transistors (TFTs) and their applications. In this letter, temperature, gate voltage, and electrode dependences of the contact resistance were investigated in amorphous InGaZnO (a-IGZO) TFTs. We found that gate voltage dependent contact resistance made a large contribution to or even dominated the field effect of oxide TFTs. After separating the influence of contact resistance, the intrinsic temperature dependent field effect mobility of the a-IGZO TFTs was obtained. Furthermore, the experimental data of the contact resistance can be well described by an optimized transmission line model, and the height of the Schottky barrier in the interface between the metal electrode and a-IGZO semiconductor was found to be related to the gate voltage and account for the contact resistance's dependence on the gate voltage. (C) 2015 AIP Publishing LLC.