In this paper, the electrical properties of top‐gated thin‐film transistors with low‐cost chemical bath deposition (CBD) of ZnO as active material and a high‐k rare‐earth oxide La2O3 as gate dielectric have been reported. The source‐drain and gate electrodes and dielectric layers are fabricated by thermal evaporation techniques in high vacuum of the order of 10−6 Torr in a coplanar electrode structure. The channel length of the TFT is of 50 μm. The fabricated TFTs are annealed at 500 °C in air. The TFTs exhibit a field effect mobility 0.58 (cm2 V−1 s−1). Use of a high dielectric constant (high‐k) gate insulator reduces the threshold voltage and subthreshold swing of the TFTs. The TFTs exhibit a low threshold voltage of 4 V. The calculated values of gain–bandwidth product and subthreshold swing are also evaluated and presented. The ON/OFF ratio of the TFT is found to be 106.

ZnO thin films were prepared by a simple chemical bath deposition technique using an inorganic solution mixture of ZnCl2 and NH3 on glass substrates and then were used as the active material in thin film transistors (TFTs). The TFTs were fabricated in a top gate coplanar electrode structure with high-k Al2O3 as the gate insulator and Al as the source, drain and gate electrodes. The TFTs were annealed in air at 500 °C for 1 h. The TFTs with a 50 μm channel length exhibited a high field-effect mobility of 0.45 cm2/(V·s) and a low threshold voltage of 1.8 V. The sub-threshold swing and drain current ON-OFF ratio were found to be 0.6 V/dec and 106, respectively.