In this work, we demonstrate enhancement-mode field-effect transistors by atomic-layer-deposited (ALD) amorphous In2O3 channel with thickness down to 0.7 nm. Thickness is found to be critical on the materials and electron transport of In2O3. Controllable thickness of In2O3 at atomic scale enables the design of sufficient 2D carrier density in the In2O3 channel integrated with the conventional dielectric. The threshold voltage and channel carrier density are found to be considerably tuned by channel thickness. Such phenomenon is understood by the trap neutral level (TNL) model where the Fermi-level tends to align deeply inside the conduction band of In2O3 and can be modulated to the bandgap in atomic layer thin In2O3 due to quantum confinement effect, which is confirmed by density function theory (DFT) calculation. The demonstration of enhancement-mode amorphous In2O3 transistors suggests In2O3 is a competitive channel material for back-end-of-line (BEOL) compatible transistors and monolithic 3D integration applications.
Thin-film transistors (TFTs) represent a wide-spread tool to determine the charge-carrier mobility of materials. Mobilities and further transistor parameters like contact resistances are commonly extracted from the electrical characteristics. However, the trust in such extracted parameters is limited, because their values depend on the extraction technique and on the underlying transistor model. We propose a technique to establish whether a chosen model is adequate to represent the transistor operation. This two-step technique analyzes the electrical measurements of a series of TFTs with diffe…
Junctionless oxide-based neuron thin-film transistors with in-plane-gate structure are fabricated at room temperature with a laser scribing process. The neuron transistors are composed of a bottom ITO floating gate and multiples of two in-plane control gates. The control gates, coupling with the floating gate, control the "on" and "off" of the transistor. Effective field-effect modulation of the drain current has been realized. AND logic is demonstrated on a dual in-plane gate neuron transistor. The developed laser scribing technology is highly desirable in terms of the fabrication of high per…
We have used an electro-optic technique to measure the position-dependent infrared absorption of holes injected into a thin crystal of the organic semiconductor, 6,13-bis(triisopropylsilylethynyl)-pentacene incorporated in a field-effect transistor. By applying square-wave voltages of variable frequency to the gate or drain, one can measure the time it takes for charges to accumulate on the surface, and therefore determine their mobility.
Ultrathin (~3 quintuple layer) field-effect transistors (FETs) of topological insulator Bi2Se3 are prepared by mechanical exfoliation on 300nm SiO2/Si susbtrates. Temperature- and gate-voltage dependent conductance measurements show that ultrathin Bi2Se3 FETs are n-type, and have a clear OFF state at negative gate voltage, with activated temperature-dependent conductance and energy barriers up to 250 meV.
We demonstrate high performance chemical bath deposited CdS thin-film transistors TFTs using atomic layer deposited ZrO2 based high-k gate dielectric material.
We demonstrated selective gas sensing with MoS2 thin-film transistors using the change in the channel conductance, characteristic transient time and low-frequency current fluctuations as the sensing parameters. The back-gated MoS2 thin-film field-effect transistors were fabricated on Si/SiO2 substrates and intentionally aged for a month to verify reliability and achieve better current stability. The same devices with the channel covered by 10 nm of Al2O3 were used as reference samples. The exposure to ethanol, acetonitrile, toluene, chloroform, and methanol vapors results in drastic changes in…
The measurements of the high - temperature current - voltage characteristics of MoS2 thin - film transistors show that the devices remain functional to temperatures of at least as high as 500 K. The temperature increase results in decreased threshold voltage and mobility. The comparison of the DC and pulse measurements shows that the DC sub - linear and super - linear output characteristics of MoS2 thin - films devices result from the Joule heating and the interplay of the threshold voltage and mobility temperature dependences. At temperatures above 450 K, an intriguing phenomenon of the "memo…
Transient currents in atomically thin MoTe$_2$ field-effect transistor are measured during cycles of pulses through the gate electrode. The transients are analyzed in light of a newly proposed model for charge trapping dynamics that renders a time-dependent change in threshold voltage the dominant effect on the channel hysteretic behavior over emission currents from the charge traps. The proposed model is expected to be instrumental in understanding the fundamental physics that governs the performance of atomically thin FETs and is applicable to the entire class of atomically thin-based device…
In this work, we demonstrate high performance indium-tin-oxide (ITO) transistors with the channel thickness down to 1 nm and ferroelectric Hf0.5Zr0.5O2 as gate dielectric. On-current of 0.243 A/mm is achieved on sub-micron gate-length ITO transistors with a channel thickness of 1 nm, while it increases to as high as 1.06 A/mm when the channel thickness increases to 2 nm. A raised source/drain structure with a thickness of 10 nm is employed, contributing to a low contact resistance of 0.15 Ωmm and a low contact resistivity of 1.1{\times}10-7 Ωcm2. The ITO transistor with a recessed channel and …
We report the fabrication of back-gated field-effect transistors (FETs) using ultra-thin, mechanically exfoliated MoSe2 flakes. The MoSe2 FETs are n-type and possess a high gate modulation, with On/Off ratios larger than 106. The devices show asymmetric characteristics upon swapping the source and drain, a finding explained by the presence of Schottky barriers at the metal contact/MoSe2 interface. Using four-point, back-gated devices we measure the intrinsic conductivity and mobility of MoSe2 as a function of gate bias, and temperature. Samples with a room temperature mobility of ~50 cm2/V.s s…
The development of high-performance multifunctional polymer-based electronic circuits is a major step towards future flexible electronics. Here, we demonstrate a tunable approach to fabricate such devices based on rationally designed dielectric super-lattice structures with photochromic azo-benzene molecules. These nanodielectrics possessing ionic, molecular, and atomic polarization are utilized in polymer thin-film transistors (TFTs) to realize high performance electronics with p-type field-effect mobility exceeding 2 cm^2/(V.s). A crossover in the transport mechanism from electrostatic dipol…
Transistors are the fundamental building block of modern electronic devices. So far, all transistors are based on various types of semiconductor junctions. The most common bipolar-junction transistors and metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistors contain p-n junctions to control the current, depending on applied biases across the junctions. Thin-film transistors need metal-semiconductor junctions for injecting and extracting electrons from their channels. Here, by coating a heavily-doped thin indium-tin-oxide (ITO) film through a shadow mask onto a biopolymer chitosan/ITO/glass substr…
A model for the extraction of the charge density dependent mobility and variable contact resistance in thin film transistors is proposed by performing a full derivation of the current-voltage characteristics both in the linear and saturation regime of operation. The calculated values are validated against the ones obtained from direct experimental methods. This approach allows unambiguous determination of both contact and channel resistance from the analysis of the current voltage characteristics of a single device, with no a-priori assumption on the two parameters. It solves the inconsistenci…
We report on "graphene-like" mechanical exfoliation of thin films of titanium ditelluride and investigation of their electronic properties. The exfoliated crystalline TiTe2 films were used as the channel layers in the back-gated field-effect transistors fabricated with Ti/Al/Au metal contacts on SiO2/Si substrates. The room-temperature current-voltage characteristics revealed strongly non-linear behavior with signatures of the source-drain threshold voltage similar to those observed in the charge-density-wave devices. The drain-current showed an unusual non-monotonic dependence on the gate bia…
The aim of this study is to assess femtosecond laser patterning of graphene in air and in vacuum for the application as source and drain electrodes in thin-film transistors (TFTs). The analysis of the laser-patterned graphene with scanning electron microscopy, atomic force microscopy and Raman spectroscopy showed that processing in vacuum leads to less debris formation and thus re-deposited carbonaceous material on the sample compared to laser processing in air. It was found that the debris reduction due to patterning in vacuum improves the TFT characteristics significantly. Hysteresis disappe…
We report herein fabrication and characterization of a thin-film transistor (TFT) using single-crystalline, epitaxial SrTiO3 film, which was grown by a pulsed laser deposition technique followed by the thermal annealing treatment in an oxygen atmosphere. Although TFTs on the polycrystalline epitaxial SrTiO3 films (as-deposited) exhibited poor transistor characteristics, the annealed single-crystalline SrTiO3 TFT exhibits transistor characteristics comparable with those of bulk single-crystal SrTiO3 FET: an on/off current ratio >10^5, sub-threshold swing ~2.1 V/decade, and field-effect mobility…
We reported here a high-performance In2O3/InZnO bilayer metal-oxide (BMO) thin-film transistor (TFT) using ultra-thin solution-processed ZrOx dielectric. A thin layer of In2O3 offers a higher carrier concentration, thereby maximizing the charge accumulation and yielding high carrier mobility. A thick layer of InZnO controls the charge conductance resulting in low off-state current and suitable threshold voltage. As a consequence, the BMO TFT showed higher filed-effect mobility (37.9 cm2/V s) than single-layer InZnO TFT (7.6 cm2/V s). More importantly, an on/off current ratio of 109, a subthres…
In the past decade, semiconducting carbon nanotube thin films have been recognized as contending materials for wide-ranging applications in electronics, energy, and sensing. In particular, improvements in large-area flexible electronics have been achieved through independent advances in post-growth processing to resolve metallic versus semiconducting carbon nanotube heterogeneity, in improved gate dielectrics, and in self-assembly processes. Moreover, controlled tuning of specific device components has afforded fundamental probes of the trade-offs between materials properties and device perfor…
Flexible and transparent electronics presents a new era of electronic technologies. Ubiquitous applications involve wearable electronics, biosensors, flexible transparent displays, radio-frequency identifications (RFIDs), etc.Zinc oxide (ZnO) and related materials are the most commonly used inorganic semiconductors in flexible and transparent devices, owing to their high electrical performance, together with low processing temperature and good optical transparency.In this paper, we review recent advances in flexible and transparent thin-film transistors (TFTs) based on ZnO and related material…
A simple laser scribing process has been developed to fabricate low-voltage junctionless in-plane-gate thin-film transistors (TFTs) arrays without any mask and photolithography. Such junctionless TFTs feature that the channel and the source/drain electrodes are of the same indium-tin-oxide films without any intentional source/drain junction deposition process. Effective field-effect modulation of the drain current has been realized on such in-plane-gate device with a field-effect mobility of ~12.6cm2/Vs. At last, AND gate logic function was demonstrated on dual in-plane-gate device.
To clarify the electronic density of states (DOS) around the conduction band bottom for state of the art transparent amorphous oxide semiconductors (TAOSs), InGaZnO4 and In2MgO4, we fabricated TAOS-based transparent thin film transistors (TTFTs) and measured their gate voltage dependence of thermopower (S). TAOS-based TTFTs exhibit an unusual S behavior. The |S|-value abruptly increases, but then gradually decreases as Vg increases, clearly suggesting the anti-parabolic shaped DOS is hybridized with the original parabolic shaped DOS around the conduction band bottom.
The electrostatic coupling between singled-walled carbon nanotube (SWNT) networks/arrays and planar gate electrodes in thin-film transistors (TFTs) is analyzed both in the quantum limit with an analytical model and in the classical limit with finite-element modeling. The computed capacitance depends on both the thickness of the gate dielectric and the average spacing between the tubes, with some dependence on the distribution of these spacings. Experiments on transistors that use sub-monolayer, random networks of SWNTs verify certain aspects of these calculations. The results are important for…
We report on the simple fabrication of hysteresis-free and electrically stable organic field-effect transistors (OFETs) and inverters operating at voltages <1-2 V, enabled by the almost trap-free interface between the organic semiconductor and an ultra-thin (<20 nm) and highly insulating single-layer fluoropolymer gate dielectric (Cytop). OFETs with PTCDI-C13 (N,N'-ditridecylperylene-3,4,9,10-tetracarboxylicdiimide) as semiconductor exhibit outstanding transistor characteristics: very low threshold voltage (0.2V), onset at 0V, steep subthreshold swing (0.1-0.2 V/decade), no hysteresis and exce…
Two-dimensional semiconductors are structurally ideal channel materials for the ultimate atomic electronics after silicon era. A long-standing puzzle is the low carrier mobility (μ) in them as compared with corresponding bulk structures, which constitutes the main hurdle for realizing high-performance devices. To address this issue, we perform combined experimental and theoretical study on atomically thin MoS2 field effect transistors with varying the number of MoS2 layers (NLs). Experimentally, an intimate relation is observed with a 10-fold degradation in μ for extremely thinned monolayer ch…
We measure the complex impedance between source/drain electrodes and the gate electrode of a pentacene thin-film transistor (TFT) at frequencies 50 Hz < omega/2pi < 20 kHz. Modeling the TFT as a distributed RC network (RC transmission line), we find that the data cannot be explained by a model including only a real, frequency-independent sheet conductivity. Instead, we use the RC transmission line model to extract the frequency-dependent complex sheet conductivity sigma(omega) = sigma'(omega) + jsigma"(omega) of the pentacene film. At high frequencies, sigma(omega) increases with frequency, si…
High throughput experimental methods are known to accelerate the rate of research, development, and deployment of electronic materials. For example, thin films with lateral gradients in composition, thickness, or other parameters have been used alongside spatially-resolved characterization to assess how various physical factors affect material properties under varying measurement conditions. Similarly, multi-layer electronic devices that contain such graded thin films as one or more of their layers can also be characterized spatially in order to optimize the performance. In this work, we apply…
Amorphous metal oxide thin-film transistors (TFT) are fabricated using InOx-based semiconductors doped with TiO2, WO3 or SiO2. Although density of dopant is low in the film, change in the electrical properties showed strong dependence on the dopant species. We found that the dependence could be reasonably explained by the bond-dissociation energy. By incorporating the dopant with higher bond-dissociation energy, the film becomes less sensitive to oxygen partial pressure used during sputtering deposition and remains electrically stable to thermal annealing treatment. The concept of bond-dissoci…
The local conductivity in the channel of a thin-film field-effect transistor is proportional to the charge density induced by the local gate voltage. We show how this determines the frequency- and position-dependence of the charge induced in the channel for the case of "zero applied current": zero drain-source voltage with charge induced by a square-wave voltage applied to the gate, assuming constant mobility and negligible contact impedances. An approximate expression for the frequency dependence of the induced charge in the center of the channel can be conveniently used to determine the char…
We discuss the environmental instability of amorphous indium oxide (InOx)-based thin-film transistors (TFTs) in terms of the excess oxygen in the semiconductor films. A comparison between amorphous InOx doped with low and high concentrations of oxygen binder (SiO2) showed that out-diffusion of oxygen molecules causes drastic changes in the film conductivity and TFT turn-on voltages. Incorporation of sufficient SiO2 could suppress fluctuations in excess oxygen because of the high oxygen bond-dissociation energy and low Gibbs free energy. Consequently, the TFT operation became rather stable. The…
A printing process for high-resolution transfer of all components for organic electronic devices on plastic substrates has been developed and demonstrated for pentacene (Pn), poly (3-hexylthiophene) and carbon nanotube (CNT) thin-film transistors (TFTs). The nanotransfer printing process allows fabrication of an entire device without exposing any component to incompatible processes and with reduced need for special chemical preparation of transfer or device substrates. Devices on plastic substrates include a Pn TFT with a saturation, field-effect mobility of 0.09 cm^2 (Vs)^-1 and on/off ratio …
Fabricating high-performance and/or high-density flexible electronics on plastic substrates is often limited by the poor dimensional stability of polymer substrates. This can be mitigated by using glass carriers during fabrication, but removing the plastic substrate from a large-area carrier without damaging the electronics remains challenging. Here we present a large-area photonic lift-off (PLO) process to rapidly separate polymer films from rigid carriers. PLO uses a 150 microsecond pulse of broadband light from flashlamps to lift off functional thin films from a glass carrier substrate coat…
Pentacenequinone (PnQ) impurities have been introduced into a pentacene source material at number densities from 0.001 to 0.474 to quantify the relative effects of impurity content and grain boundary structure on transport in pentacene thin-film transistors. Atomic force microscopy (AFM) and electrical measurements of top-contact pentacene thin-film transistors have been employed to directly correlate initial structure and final film structures, with the device mobility as a function of added impurity content. The results reveal a factor four decrease in mobility without significant changes in…
We demonstrate the field-effect transistor (FET) operation of molecularly-thin anatase phase produced through solid state transformation from Ti0.87O2 nanosheets. Monolayer Ti0.87O2 nanosheet with a thickness of 0.7 nm is two-dimensional oxide insulators in which Ti vacancies are incorporated, rather than oxygen vacancies. Since the fabrication method, in general, largely affects the film quality, the anatase films derived from Ti0.87O2 nanosheet show interesting characteristics, such as no photocurrent peak at ~2 eV, which is related to oxygen vacancies, and a larger band gap of 3.8 eV. The 1…
Infrared (IR) transmittance tunable metal-insulator conversion was demonstrated on glass substrate by using thermochromic vanadium dioxide (VO2) as the active layer in three-terminal thin-film-transistor-type device with water-infiltrated glass as the gate insulator. Alternative positive/negative gate-voltage applications induce the reversible protonation/deprotonation of VO2 channel, and two-orders of magnitude modulation of sheet-resistance and 49% modulation of IR-transmittance were simultaneously demonstrated at room temperature by the metal-insulator phase conversion of VO2 in a non-volat…
We find that O-vacancy (Vo) acts as a hole trap and play a role in negative bias illumination stress instability in amorphous In-Ga-Zn-O thin film transistors. Photo-excited holes drifted toward the channel/dielectric interface due to small potential barriers and can be captured by Vo in the dielectrics. While Vo(+2) defects are very stable at room temperature, their original deep states are recovered via electron capture upon annealing. We also find that Vo(+2) can diffuse in amorphous phase, including hole accumulation near the interface under negative gate bias.
Transparent amorphous oxide semiconductors (TAOSs) based transparent thin-film transistors (TTFTs) with high field effect mobility are essential for developing advanced flat panel displays. Among TAOSs, amorphous (a-) SnO$_2$ has several advantages against current a-InGaZnO4 such as higher field effect mobility and being indium free. Although a-SnO$_2$ TTFT has been demonstrated several times, the operation mechanism has not been clarified thus far due to the strong gas sensing characteristics of SnO$_2$. Here we clarify the operation mechanism of a-SnO$_2$ TTFT by electric field thermopower m…
We report the development of indium oxide (In2O3) transistors via a single step laser-induced photochemical conversion process of a sol-gel metal oxide precursor. Through careful optimization of the laser annealing conditions we demonstrated successful conversion of the precursor to In2O3 and its subsequent implementation in n-channel transistors with electron mobility up to 13 cm2/Vs. Importantly, the process does not require thermal annealing making it compatible with temperature sensitive materials such as plastic. On the other hand, the spatial conversion/densification of the sol-gel layer…
We measured the bias stress characteristics of poly(thiophene) semi-crystalline thin-film transistors (TFTs) as a function stress times, gate voltages and duty-cycles. At room temperature, the bias stress has two components: a fast reversible component and a slow irreversible component. We hypothesize that the irreversible component is due to charge trapping in the disordered areas of the semiconductor film. At low duty-cycle (<2%), the fast bias stress component is reversed during the off-part of the cycle therefore the observed VT shift in only caused by irreversible trapping. Irreversible t…
Next-generation electronics calls for new materials beyond silicon for increased functionality, performance, and scaling in integrated circuits. Carbon nanotubes and semiconductor nanowires are at the forefront of these materials, but have challenges due to the complex fabrication techniques required for large-scale applications. Two-dimensional (2D) gapless graphene and semiconducting transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDCs) have emerged as promising electronic materials due to their atomic thickness, chemical stability and scalability. Difficulties in the assembly of 2D electronic structures…
Investigating lateral electrical transport in p-type thin film chalcogenides is important to evaluate their potential for field-effect transistors (FETs) and phase-change memory applications. For instance, p-type FETs with sputtered materials at low temperature (<= 250 C) could play a role in flexible electronics or back-end-of-line (BEOL) silicon-compatible processes. Here, we explore lateral transport in chalcogenide films (Sb2Te3, Ge2Sb2Te5, Ge4Sb6Te7) and multilayers, with Hall measurements (in <= 50 nm thin films) and with p-type transistors (in <= 5 nm ultrathin films). The highest Hall …
We studied the influence of oxygen on the electronic trap states in a pentacene thin film. This was done by carrying out gated four-terminal measurements on thin-film transistors as a function of temperature and without ever exposing the samples to ambient air. Photooxidation of pentacene is shown to lead to a peak of trap states centered at 0.28 eV from the mobility edge, with trap densities of the order of 10(18) cm(-3). These trap states need to be occupied at first and cause a reduction in the number of free carriers, i.e. a consistent shift of the density of free holes as a function of ga…
The conductivity of organic semiconductors is measured {\it in-situ} and continuously with a bottom contact configuration, as a function of film thickness at various gate voltages. The depletion layer thickness can be directly determined as a shift of the threshold thickness at which electric current began to flow. The {\it in-situ} and continuous measurement can also determine qualitatively the accumulation layer thickness together with the distribution function of injected carriers. The accumulation layer thickness is a few mono layers, and it does not depend on gate voltages, rather depends…
Kapton HN films, adopted worldwide due to their superior thermal durability (up to 400 °C), allow the high temperature sintering of nanoparticle based metal inks. By carefully selecting inks and Kapton substrates, outstanding thermal stability and anti-delaminating features are obtained in both aqueous and organic solutions and were applied to four novel devices: a solid state ion selective nitrate sensor, an ssDNA based mercury aptasensor, a low cost protein sensor, and a long lasting organic thin film transistor (OTFT). Many experimental studies on parameter combinations were conducted durin…
Charge Transport in Thin-Film Transistors Based on Liquid-Crystalline Phthalocyanines
Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina（圣卡塔琳娜联邦大学）；Institut national de la recherche scientifique, Centre Énergie Matériaux Télécommunications（国家科学研究研究所，能源材料电信中心）；Centre de Recherche Paul Pascal, Université de Bordeaux & CNRS（保罗·帕斯卡研究中心，波尔多大学与法国国家科学研究中心）
Thin film transistors, with channels composed of In-X-Zn oxides, IXZO, with X dopants: Ga, Sb, Be, Mg, Ag, Ca, Al, Ni, and Cu, were fabricated and their I-V characteristics were taken at selected temperatures in the 77K<T<300K range. The low field mobility, mu, and the interface defect density, Nst were extracted from the characteristics for each of the studied IXZOs. At higher T the mobility follows the Arrhenius law with an upward distortion, increasing as T was lowered, gradually transforming into the exp [-(T0/T)1/4] variation. We showed that mu(T, Nst) follows mu0exp[-Eaeff(T,Nst)/kT], wi…
Layered semiconductors, such as MoS2, have attracted interest as channel materials for post-silicon and beyond-CMOS electronics. Much attention has been devoted to the monolayer limit, but the monolayer channel is not necessarily advantageous in terms of the performance of field-effect transistors (FETs). Therefore, it is important to investigate the characteristics of FETs that have multilayer channels. Here, we report the staircase-like transfer characteristics of FETs with exfoliated multilayer MoS2 flakes. Atomic force microscope characterizations reveal that the presence of thinner terrac…
The single particle tunneling in a vertical stack consisting of monolayers of two-dimensional semiconductors is studied theoretically and its application to a novel Two-dimensional Heterojunction Interlayer Tunneling Field Effect Transistor (Thin-TFET) is proposed and described. The tunneling current is calculated by using a formalism based on the Bardeen's transfer Hamiltonian, and including a semi-classical treatment of scattering and energy broadening effects. The misalignment between the two 2D materials is also studied and found to influence the magnitude of the tunneling current, but hav…
