The Performance Improvement of N₂ Plasma Treatment on ZrO₂ Gate Dielectric Thin-Film Transistors with Atmospheric Pressure Plasma-Enhanced Chemical Vapor Deposition IGZO Channel

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to illustrate the N2 plasma treatment for high-κ ZrO2 gate dielectric stack (30 nm) with indium-gallium-zinc-oxide (IGZO) thin-film transistors (TFTs). Experimental results reveal that a suitable incorporation of nitrogen atoms could enhance the device performance by eliminating the oxygen vacancies and provide an amorphous surface with better surface roughness. With N2 plasma treated ZrO2 gate, IGZO channel is fabricated by atmospheric pressure plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition (AP-PECVD) technique. The best performance of the AP-PECVD IGZO TFTs are obtained with 20 W-90 sec N2 plasma treatment with field-effect mobility (μ(FET)) of 22.5 cm2/V-s, subthreshold swing (SS) of 155 mV/dec, and on/off current ratio (I(on)/I(off)) of 1.49 x 10(7).

Enhancement of Electrical Properties of Sol–Gel Indium–Tin–Oxide Films by Microwave Irradiation and Plasma Treatment

“…In particular, as the plasma-based process is simple, ecofriendly, and low temperature, it has been applied for the precision cleaning of semiconductor surfaces and photoresist ashing processes [18]. Numerous gases are used for plasma surface treatment depending on its purpose [19][20][21][22]. Argon (Ar) causes high-energy electron collision on a surface during plasma treatment, thereby increasing oxygen vacancies.…”

Research Progress of High Dielectric Constant Zirconia-Based Materials for Gate Dielectric Application

“…The chemical reactions of precursor species occur both in the gas phase and on the substrate [33]. Reactions can be promoted or initiated by heat (thermal CVD) [19], higher frequency radiation such as UV (photo-assisted CVD) [34] or a plasma (plasma-enhanced CVD) [35]. Moreover, it has capability to mass produce components that are uniformly coated with complex shapes and deposited with good conformal coverage.…”

“…It can reduce the decrease of carrier mobility due to remote scattering, but at the cost of increasing the thickness of the equivalent oxide. In addition, nitrogen doping in the gate oxide layer is found to be beneficial to improving the thermodynamic properties, effectively reducing the interface layer thickness and leakage current density [35,51,52]. A further decrease of the diffusion coefficient of oxygen in the alloy, thus reduces the crystallization rate significantly, so that the silicate can withstand the high temperature required by doping activation steps in the MOS process [53].…”

High-performance YbTixOy/PbZr0.53Ti0.47O3 stacked gate dielectric for InGaZnO thin-film transistors

“…Instead of amorphous and polycrystalline Si channel layers, amorphous oxide semiconductor (AOS) materials, including zinc tin oxide (ZnSnO), indium zinc-oxide (InZnO), indium-gallium-zinc-oxide (InGaZnO) [1,2], have gained great attention in thin-film transistors (TFTs). Among these materials, InGaZnO is a very suitable channel material for 6 Author to whom any correspondence should be addressed. flexible electronic, transparent electronic, and paper electronic applications [3].…”