Matching Items (2)
Filtering by
- Creators: Krause, Stephen
Description
This thesis work mainly examined the stability and reliability issues of amorphous Indium Gallium Zinc Oxide (a-IGZO) thin film transistors under bias-illumination stress. Amorphous hydrogenated silicon has been the dominating material used in thin film transistors as a channel layer. However with the advent of modern high performance display technologies, it is required to have devices with better current carrying capability and better reproducibility. This brings the idea of new material for channel layer of these devices. Researchers have tried poly silicon materials, organic materials and amorphous mixed oxide materials as a replacement to conventional amorphous silicon layer. Due to its low price and easy manufacturing process, amorphous mixed oxide thin film transistors have become a viable option to replace the conventional ones in order to achieve high performance display circuits. But with new materials emerging, comes the challenge of reliability and stability issues associated with it. Performance measurement under bias stress and bias-illumination stress have been reported previously. This work proposes novel post processing low temperature long time annealing in optimum ambient in order to annihilate or reduce the defects and vacancies associated with amorphous material which lead to the instability or even the failure of the devices. Thin film transistors of a-IGZO has been tested for standalone illumination stress and bias-illumination stress before and after annealing. HP 4155B semiconductor parameter analyzer has been used to stress the devices and measure the output characteristics and transfer characteristics of the devices. Extra attention has been given about the effect of forming gas annealing on a-IGZO thin film. a-IGZO thin film deposited on silicon substrate has been tested for resistivity, mobility and carrier concentration before and after annealing in various ambient. Elastic Recoil Detection has been performed on the films to measure the amount of hydrogen atoms present in the film. Moreover, the circuit parameters of the thin film transistors has been extracted to verify the physical phenomenon responsible for the instability and failure of the devices. Parameters like channel resistance, carrier mobility, power factor has been extracted and variation of these parameters has been observed before and after the stress.
ContributorsRuhul Hasin, Muhammad (Author) / Alford, Terry L. (Thesis advisor) / Krause, Stephen (Committee member) / Kitchen, Jennifer (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
The object of this study is to investigate and improve the performance/stability of the flexible thin film transistors (TFTs) and to study the properties of metal oxide transparent conductive oxides for wide range of flexible electronic applications. Initially, a study has been done to improve the conductivity of ITO (indium tin oxide) films on PEN (polyethylene naphthalate) by inserting a thin layer of silver layer between two ITO layers. The multilayer with an optimum Ag mid-layer thickness, of 8 nm, exhibited excellent photopic average transmittance (~ 88 %), resistivity (~ 2.7 × 10-5 µ-cm.) and has the best Hackee figure of merit (41.0 × 10-3 Ω-1). The electrical conduction is dominated by two different scattering mechanisms depending on the thickness of the Ag mid-layer. Optical transmission is explained by scattering losses and absorption of light due to inter-band electronic transitions. A systematic study was carried out to improve the performance/stability of the TFTs on PEN. The performance and stability of a-Si:H and a-IZO (amorphous indium zinc oxide) TFTs were improved by performing a systematic low temperature (150 °C) anneals for extended times. For 96 hours annealed a-Si:H TFTs, the sub-threshold slope and off-current were reduced by a factor ~ 3 and by 2 orders of magnitude, respectively when compared to unannealed a-Si:H TFTs. For a-IZO TFTs, 48 hours of annealing is found to be the optimum time for the best performance and elevated temperature stability. These devices exhibit saturation mobility varying between 4.5-5.5 cm2/V-s, ION/IOFF ratio was 106 and a sub-threshold swing variation of 1-1.25 V/decade. An in-depth study on the mechanical and electromechanical stress response on the electrical properties of the a-IZO TFTs has also been investigated. Finally, the a-Si:H TFTs were exposed to gamma radiation to examine their radiation resistance. The interface trap density (Nit) values range from 5 to 6 × 1011 cm-2 for only electrical stress bias case. For "irradiation only" case, the Nit value increases from 5×1011 cm-2 to 2×1012 cm-2 after 3 hours of gamma radiation exposure, whereas it increases from 5×1011 cm-2 to 4×1012 cm-2 for "combined gamma and electrical stress".
ContributorsIndluru, Anil (Author) / Alford, Terry L. (Thesis advisor) / Schroder, Dieter (Committee member) / Krause, Stephen (Committee member) / Theodore, David (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2011