The composition of amorphous oxide semiconductors, which are well known for their optical transparency, can be tailored to enhance their absorption and induce photoconductivity for irradiation with green, and shorter wavelength light. In principle, amorphous oxide semiconductor-based thin-film photoconductors could hence be applied as photosensors. However, their photoconductivity persists for hours after illumination has been removed, which severely degrades the response time and the frame rate of oxide-based sensor arrays. We have solved the problem of persistent photoconductivity (PPC) by developing a gated amorphous oxide semiconductor photo thin-film transistor (photo-TFT) that can provide direct control over the position of the Fermi level in the active layer. Applying a short-duration (10 ns) voltage pulse to these devices induces electron accumulation and accelerates their recombination with ionized oxygen vacancy sites, which are thought to cause PPC. We have integrated these photo-TFTs in a transparent active-matrix photosensor array that can be operated at high frame rates and that has potential applications in contact-free interactive displays.

In spite of the recent heightened interest in molybdenum disulfide (MoS2) as a two-dimensional material with substantial bandgaps and reasonably high carrier mobility, a method for the layer-controlled and large-scale synthesis of high quality MoS2 films has not previously been established. Here, we demonstrate that layer-controlled and large-area CVD MoS2 films can be achieved by treating the surfaces of their bottom SiO2 substrates with the oxygen plasma process. Raman mapping, UV-Vis, and PL mapping are performed to show that mono, bi, and trilayer MoS2 films grown on the plasma treated substrates fully cover the centimeter scale substrates with a uniform thickness. Our TEM images also present the single crystalline nature of the monolayer MoS2 film and the formation of the layer-controlled bi- and tri-layer MoS2 films. Back-gated transistors fabricated on these MoS2 films are found to exhibit the high current on/off ratio of ∼10(6) and high mobility values of 3.6 cm(2) V(-1) s(-1) (monolayer), 8.2 cm(2) V(-1) s(-1) (bilayer), and 15.6 cm(2) V(-1) s(-1) (trilayer). Our results are expected to have a significant impact on further studies of the MoS2 growth mechanism as well as on the scaled layer-controlled production of high quality MoS2 films for a wide range of applications.

We report a novel negative photoconductivity (NPC) mechanism in n-type indium arsenide nanowires (NWs). Photoexcitation significantly suppresses the conductivity with a gain up to 10(5). The origin of NPC is attributed to the depletion of conduction channels by light assisted hot electron trapping, supported by gate voltage threshold shift and wavelength-dependent photoconductance measurements. Scanning photocurrent microscopy excludes the possibility that NPC originates from the NW/metal contacts and reveals a competing positive photoconductivity. The conductivity recovery after illumination substantially slows down at low temperature, indicating a thermally activated detrapping mechanism. At 78 K, the spontaneous recovery of the conductance is completely quenched, resulting in a reversible memory device, which can be switched by light and gate voltage pulses. The novel NPC based optoelectronics may find exciting applications in photodetection and nonvolatile memory with low power consumption.

The electron conduction mechanism in the above-threshold regime in amorphous oxide semiconductor thin film transistors is shown to be controlled by percolation and trap-limited conduction. The band tail state slope controls the field effect mobility, while the average spatial coherence length and potential fluctuation control percolation conduction. In these limits, the field effect mobility is found to follow a power law, from which a universal mobility versus carrier concentration dependence is extracted.

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Passivated Hf–In–Zn–O (HIZO) thin film transistors suffer from a negative threshold voltage shift under visible light stress due to persistent photoconductivity (PPC). Ionization of oxygen vacancy sites is identified as the origin of the PPC following observations of its temperature- and wavelength-dependence. This is further corroborated by the photoluminescence spectrum of the HIZO. We also show that the gate voltage can control the decay of PPC in the dark, giving rise to a memory action.

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