We find that O-vacancy (VO) acts as a hole trap and plays a role in negative bias illumination stress instability in amorphous In–Ga–Zn–O thin film transistors. Photoexcited holes drift toward the channel/dielectric interface due to small potential barriers and can be captured by VO in the dielectrics. While some of 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, inducing hole accumulation near the interface under negative gate bias.

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In amorphous indium-gallium-zinc oxide (a-IGZO) thin film transistors, negative shifts of the threshold voltage commonly occur under negative bias illumination stress (NBIS), and its origin is attributed to hole traps such as O-vacancy (VO) defects. We perform density functional calculations to investigate the effect of hydrogenation on the NBIS instability. We find that hydrogen passivates the electrical activity of VO in form of HO, in which H occupies the vacancy site. The activation energy for dissociating HO into VO and an interstitial H (Hi) is about 1.27 eV, much higher than the migration barrier of about 0.51 eV for Hi diffusion. Kinetic Monte Carlo simulations show that HO defects are quite stable upon post thermal annealing up to 200 °C. Thus, we propose that H incorporation into a-IGZO not only effectively reduces the density of VO defects but also mitigates the NBIS instability in devices fabricated at low temperatures.

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Oxygen vacancies have been considered as the origin of threshold voltage instability under negative bias illumination stress in amorphous oxide thin film transistors. Here we report the results of first-principles molecular dynamics simulations for the drift motion of oxygen vacancies. We show that oxygen vacancies, which are initially ionized by trapping photoexcited hole carriers, can easily migrate under an external electric field. Thus, accumulated hole traps near the channel/dielectric interface cause negative shift of the threshold voltage, supporting the oxygen vacancy model. In addition, we find that ionized oxygen vacancies easily recover their neutral defect configurations by capturing electrons when the Fermi level increases. Our results are in good agreement with the experimental observation that applying a positive gate bias pulse of short duration eliminates hole traps and thus leads to the recovery of device stability from persistent photoconductivity.