The photochemical tunability of the charge-transport mechanism in metal-oxide semiconductors is of great interest since it may offer a facile but effective semiconductor-to-metal transition, which results from photochemically modified electronic structures for various oxide-based device applications. This might provide a feasible hydrogen (H)-radical doping to realize the effectively H-doped metal oxides, which has not been achieved by thermal and ion-implantation technique in a reliable and controllable way. In this study, we report a photochemical conversion of InGaZnO (IGZO) semiconductor to a transparent conductor via hydrogen doping to the local nanocrystallites formed at the IGZO/glass interface at room temperature. In contrast to thermal or ionic hydrogen doping, ultraviolet exposure of the IGZO surface promotes a photochemical reaction with H radical incorporation to surface metal-OH layer formation and bulk H-doping which acts as a tunable and stable highly doped n-type doping channel and turns IGZO to a transparent conductor. This results in the total conversion of carrier conduction property to the level of metallic conduction with sheet resistance of ∼16 Ω/□, room temperature Hall mobility of 11.8 cm(2) V(-1) sec(-1), the carrier concentration at ∼10(20) cm(-3) without any loss of optical transparency. We demonstrated successful applications of photochemically highly n-doped metal oxide via optical dose control to transparent conductor with excellent chemical and optical doping stability.
We introduce a transparent diode that shows both high rectifying ratio and low leakage current at process temperature below 250 °C. This device is clearly distinguished from all previous transparent diodes in that the rectifying behavior results from the junction between a semiconductor (amorphous indium-gallium-zinc oxide (a-IGZO)) and insulator (SiNx). We systematically study the properties of each junction within the device structure and demonstrate that the a-IGZO/SiNx junction is the source of the outstanding rectification. The electrical characteristics of this transparent diode are: 2.8 A/cm2 on-current density measured at −7 V; lower than 7.3 × 10−9 A/cm2 off-current density; 2.53 ideality factor; and high rectifying ratio of 108–109. Furthermore, the diode structure has a transmittance of over 80% across the visible light range. The operating principle of the indium-tin oxide (ITO)/a-IGZO/SiNx/ITO device was examined with an aid of the energy band diagram and we propose a preliminary model for the rectifying behavior. Finally, we suggest further directions for research on this transparent diode.
We studied the effect of X-ray irradiation on the negative threshold voltage shift of bottom-gate a-IGZO TFT. Based on spectroscopic analyses, we found that this behavior was caused by hydrogen incorporation and oxygen vacancy ionization.
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