Improvement in the device performance of tin-doped indium oxide transistor by oxygen high pressure annealing at 150 °C

This study examined the effect of oxygen (O-2) high pressure annealing (HPA) on tin-doped indium oxide (ITO) thin film transistors (TFTs). The HPA-treated TFT at 150 degrees C exhibited a high saturation mobility (mu(SAT)), low subthreshold gate swing (SS), threshold voltage, and I-on/off of 25.8 cm(2)/Vs, 0.14 V/decade, 0.6 V, and 2 x 10(8), respectively. In contrast, the ambient-annealed device suffered from a lower mu(SAT) and high SS value of 5.2 cm(2)/Vs and 0.58 V/decade, respectively. This improvement can be attributed to the decreased concentration of oxygen vacancy defects in the ITO channel layer during the effective O-2 HPA treatment, which also resulted in smaller hysteresis and less degradation of the drain current under positive bias stress conditions. (C) 2012 American Institute of Physics. [http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.4704926]