All-Amorphous-Oxide Transparent, Flexible Thin-Film Transistors. Efficacy of Bilayer Gate Dielectrics

Abstract

Optically transparent and mechanically flexible thin-film transistors (TF-TFTs) composed exclusively of amorphous metal oxide films are fabricated on plastic substrates by combining an amorphous Ta(2)O(5)/SiO(x) bilayer transparent oxide insulator (TOI) gate dielectric with an amorphous zinc-indium-tin oxide (a-ZITO) transparent oxide semiconductor (TOS) channel and a-ZITO transparent oxide conductor (TOC) electrodes. The bilayer gate dielectric is fabricated by the post-cross-linking of vapor-deposited hexachlorodisiloxane-derived films to form thin SiO(x) layers (v-SiO(x)) on amorphous Ta(2)O(5) (a-Ta(2)O(5)) films grown by ion-assisted deposition at room temperature. The a-Ta(2)O(5)/v-SiO(x) bilayer TOI dielectric integrates the large capacitance of the high dielectric constant a-Ta(2)O(5) layer with the excellent dielectric/semiconductor interfacial compatibility of the v-SiO(x) layer in a-ZITO TOS-based TF-TFTs. These all-amorphous-oxide TF-TFTs, having a channel length and width of 100 and 2000 microm, respectively, perform far better than a-Ta(2)O(5)-only devices and exhibit saturation-regime field-effect mobilities of approximately 20 cm(2)/V x s, on-currents >10(-4) A, and current on-off ratios >10(5). These TFTs operate at low voltages (approximately 4.0 V) and exhibit good visible-region optical transparency and excellent mechanical flexibility.