Fabrication and characterization of ultra-thin ZnO based bottom gate thin film transistor for UV detection

An RF sputtered ZnO thin film was utilized in a thin film transistor (TFT) fabrication. The film was fabricated on SiO2 gate oxide that was thermally grown on Si Substrate. Few lithography steps were used to fabricate the device and device structure was proved to be a bottom gate TFT. The grown film was ultra thin of 25 nm thickness and the Si wafer was n-type. The structural and optical properties of ZnO films were investigated by Field Emission Scanning Electron Microscopy (FESEM), X-Ray Diffraction (XRD) and Photo luminance (PL) spectroscopy. The photo luminance study confirmed a high-quality absorbance in UV spectra and relatively good transmittance in the visible region. The electrical performance of the transistor was studied using Proxima B1500 and the on/off current ratio was measured to be similar to 10(7). The ZnO bottom gate TFT is simulated using the commercial TCAD tool Silvaco ATLAS T. Later the simulated I-V characteristic of the device is compared with the experimental one and both are in fairly good agreement. Further the UV detection capability of the fabricated device was studied by using UV LED light of 365 nm wavelength. The measured value of threshold voltage was found to be 9V under dark light and 10V under UV light.

Automated summary

A RF sputtered ZnO thin film was used to fabricate a thin film transistor (TFT) on a Si substrate with SiO2 gate oxide. The ZnO film exhibited good structural and optical properties, with high-quality absorbance in UV spectra and relatively good transmittance in the visible region. The electrical performance of the TFT was studied and simulated, showing good agreement between the experimental and simulated results. Additionally, the device demonstrated UV detection capability with different threshold voltages under dark light and UV light.