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Top-gate staggered hydrogenated amorphous silicon (a-Si:H) thin-film transistors (TFTs) were fabricated over large-area glass substrates using a selective phosphorus-treatment (PT) of indium-tin-oxide (ITO) source/drain electrodes. The ohmic contact between a-Si:H and ITO had a specific contact resistivity of about 0.18 Ω·cm2. For a 100-µm channel length TFT, the source/drain series resistance contributes less than 5% of the total drain-to-source resistance. This contribution increases to about 25% for a 10-µm channel length TFT. Our study also indicated that the interface quality of a-Si:H/a-SiN x :H is amorphous silicon nitride (a-SiN x :H) and a-Si:H thickness independent and dependent, respectively. Effective interface state densities of about 1.5×1012 cm-2eV-1 and 3.2×1012 cm-2eV-1 were obtained for top-gate TFTs with a 1300 and 300 Å thick a-Si:H films, respectively. Channel conductance activation energy of about 0.1 eV was measured for this top-gate TFT with 300 Å a-Si:H.

The low frequency noise properties of organic thin film transistors are studied here as a function of frequency and bias. Various n-channel and p-channel devices were evaluated and found to exhibit 1/f-type of noise in the 1 Hz–10 kHz range. The drain current noise is found to vary proportionally with drain current. The noise level is comparable to that found in Si metal–oxide–semiconductor field-effect transistors within the operation region of the devices, owing to the smaller drain currents in organic transistors, although the intrinsic noise is considerably higher in the organic transistors. The viability of using the organic materials in low noise circuits is demonstrated by a ring oscillator.

We have analyzed the influence of the hydrogenated amorphous silicon (a-Si:H) thickness on the electrical performances of top gate thin-film transistors (TFTs). We have observed that, when the a-Si:H thickness increases, the threshold voltage and the subthreshold slope decrease. The modification of the TFT apparent field-effect mobility has also been investigated: we have shown that it first increases with the a-Si:H thickness, and then decreases for thicker a-Si:H films. This change of electrical performances is most likely associated with both the variation of a-Si:H microstructure during the film depositions and the effect of parasitic source and drain series resistances. We have demonstrated that for a given TFT geometry, it is therefore possible to define an optimum a-Si:H thickness ensuring maximum TFT electrical performances, and that this optimum thickness increases significantly with the TFT channel length.

We present a method of extracting the field-effect mobility from the transfer characteristics of organic polymer thin-film transistors (OP-TFTs), in both the linear and saturation regimes, by accounting for the dependence of the mobility on the gate bias, which translates to a dependence on the accumulated density of majority charge carriers in the channel. This method is compared to the commonly used extraction methods, which are based on the standard MOSFET square-law drain current equations that do not account for the variation of mobility with the applied gate bias. We show that by using the standard MOSFET equations, the extracted field-effect mobility can be significantly overestimated. We also demonstrate the use of the proposed method to extract the field-effect mobility at different measurement temperatures and present the dependence of the extracted parameters on temperature.