REGULAR PAPER

Japanese Journal of Applied Physics 51 (2012) 011401

DOI: 10.1143/JJAP.51.011401

Effects of Metal Electrode on the Electrical Performance

of Amorphous InGaZnO Thin Film Transistor
Jung-Ryoul Yim
, Sung-Yup Jung, Han-Wool Yeon, Jang-Yoen Kwon,
Young-Joo Lee, Je-Hun Lee1 , and Young-Chang Jooy
Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Seoul National University, Seoul 151-742, Korea
1
Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., Yongin, Gyeonggi 446-711, Korea
Received August 8, 2011; accepted October 31, 2011; published online December 19, 2011
Effects of metal electrode on the electrical performance of amorphous InGaZnO (a-IGZO) thin film transistor (TFT) have been studied.
Electrical performances and interface stability between Mo, Al, and Cu electrode and a-IGZO semiconductor have been investigated before and
after air-annealing. No inter-diffusion and interfacial reaction has been observed between Mo and a-IGZO and the turn-on voltage of the Mo
electrode TFT was 0 V after annealing. As for Al, Al oxide was formed at the interface, and the number of conduction electrons in a-IGZO
increased. Thus, a negative turn-on voltage was observed after air-annealing. As for Cu, Cu diffused into a-IGZO during air-annealing and acted
as an acceptor. Therefore the a-IGZO TFT with a Cu electrode had a positive turn-on voltage and sub-threshold slope increased after airannealing. These results indicate that the transistor performance can be affected by the metal types due to inter-diffusion or interfacial reaction
between metal and a-IGZO. # 2012 The Japan Society of Applied Physics

1. Introduction

Next generation displays of large size (>100 in.),

high resolution (20004000 pixels) and fast-frame rate
(>120 Hz) necessitate the development of high-performance
transistors (with eld-eect mobility > 3 cm2 V1 s1 ).1,2)
In the case of hydrogeneated amorphous silicon thin lm
transistor (a-Si:H TFT), it is not appropriate device for
next generation displays due to its low mobility (<1
cm2 V1 s1 ).3) In the case of polycrystalline silicon (polySi) TFT, though its high mobility (>100 cm2 V1 s1 ), polySi TFT has a problem with the variation of electrical
properties due to grain boundary.35)
To overcome low mobility and non-uniformity problems,
amorphous oxide semiconductor has been widely studied.610) Especially, in 2004, Hosono et al. reported
an amorphous InGaZnO (a-IGZO) semiconductor, the
leading candidate for the channel material.11) An a-IGZO
semiconductor has high mobility, electrical stability, and
excellent uniformity.1215) So, a-IGZO TFT will be considered as next generation display channel devices.
A high-conducting electrode is also important for the
realization of large-area displays because the RC delay from
the interconnect can deteriorate the driving speed. Therefore,
a metal with low resistivity, such as Al and Cu, should be
used for the interconnects, replacing Mo, which is currently
used.16)
The contact resistances and interface electrical characteristics strongly depend on the electronic structure and carrier
density of the channel surface. There are reports on the eect
of a metal electrode on contact resistance between a metal/
oxidesemiconductor interface.12,13,17,18) For example, Al
can form Al2 O3 and it could cause unstable and high
resistivity contact.19) In the case of Cu, it was reported that
good ohmic contact was formed between Cu and a-IGZO in
the TFT annealed in ambient air.12) However, inter-diusion
or interfacial reaction between Cu and a-IGZO during
annealing may cause a change in device performance. There

Present address: Samsung Electro-Mechanics Co., Ltd., Suwon, Gyeonggi

443-743, Korea.
y
E-mail address: ycjoo@snu.ac.kr

is a report on the contact resistance change between a metal

electrode and a-IGZO, including Cu and Al in the TFT.13)
However, this study was done in an un-annealed state after
metal deposition. Annealing is necessary to achieve the
uniformity and stability of the a-IGZO TFTs.14,15,2022)
Because the a-IGZO can cause both metal oxidation and
an inter-diusion and/or interfacial reaction with a metal
electrode during annealing, the eect of a metal electrode on
the TFT performance before and after annealing should be
studied.
It was reported that TFTs with Mo electrodes had no
inter-diusion and no interfacial reaction between Mo and
a-IGZO during annealing, and the evolution of the electrical
properties was barely noticeable.20)
However, the eect of inter-diusion and interfacial
reactions between the metal electrodes with low resistivity
(Cu and Al) and a-IGZO on the performance of an amorphous oxide TFT, such as the threshold voltage shift and the
changes of the sub-threshold slope, have not been clearly
studied and remain a barrier to commercialization. In this
paper, the inter-diusion and interfacial reaction between
a metal and a-IGZO were studied by both measurement of
electrical performance in an a-IGZO TFT and a microstructural/chemical analysis of the interface between a metal
and a-IGZO.
2. Experimental Procedure

The bottom-gate thin lm transistors with a 150 m in

channel length and 1000 m in channel width were fabricated through shadow mask patterning. SiO2 gate insulators
(100 nm thick) were grown thermally on a low-resistance
(heavily doped), p-type Si wafer (0.001 ) that was used as
a gate. Subsequently, 40-nm-thick a-IGZO channel layers
were RF sputtered at a substrate temperature of 200  C
at a RF power of 50 W using a target with 1 : 1 : 2 mol
of Ga2 O3 : In2 O3 : ZnO. Ar with O2 was owed into the
chamber at ow rates of 1 sccm for O2 and 19 sccm for Ar at
a working pressure (Ar + O2 ) of 5 mTorr during sputtering.
For the sourcedrain electrodes, Mo, Al, and Cu (approximately 700 nm thick) were DC sputtered at room temperature at a working pressure Ar of 4 mTorr with a power of
50 W. The device was formed without any passivation-layer

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Fig. 1. Transfer characteristics at VD 5 V in a-IGZO TFTs with (a) Mo, (b) Al, and (c) Cu electrodes. The transfer characteristics of as-deposited and
air-annealed TFTs were measured in a vacuum chamber.

on the a-IGZO lm. In the case of the Cu electrode device,

Mo (approximately 200 nm) was deposited on the Cu electrode to prevent Cu oxidation during annealing in air. The
TFTs were annealed at 250  C for 1 h in ambient air after
metal deposition to achieve the optimal properties.
The electrical characterization was carried out using a
Keithley 4200-SCS parameter analyzer. The experiments
were performed in a vacuum chamber at a pressure below
3:0  106 Torr to eliminate the eect of O2 or moisture on
the unpassivated device.2) The TFT performance, such as the
turn-on voltage and sub-threshold slope, were obtained from
the measured transfer curves.
The interfacial microstructures between a metal and aIGZO were observed in a cross-sectional high-resolution
transmission electron microscope (HR-TEM; FEI Tecnai
F20) operated at 200 kV. The samples with a stack structure
of metal/a-IGZO/SiO2 on a Si substrate were fabricated
with the same conditions and same thickness of each lm as
those of the TFT device, except for the deposition without
shadow masking.
Time-of-ight secondary ion mass spectrometry (TOFSIMS) analysis was also performed (TOF.SIMS 5, IONTOF). Samples with a stack structure of Mo (40 nm)/
a-IGZO (100 nm)/SiO2 (100 nm) on a Si substrate and
Mo (15 nm)/Cu (70 nm)/a-IGZO (100 nm)/SiO2 (100 nm)
on a Si substrate were prepared. A metal layer with a
width of 5 mm was deposited on the a-IGZO lms using
the shadow mask method so that a-IGZO could be in air
ambient during air-annealing in the same manner as the
a-IGZO TFT.
3. Results and Discussion

Figure 1 shows the typical transfer characteristics

(log ID VG at VD 5 V, where ID is the drain current, VG
the gate voltage, and VD the drain voltage) of a-IGZO TFTs
with an Al, a Mo, and a Cu electrodes. The turn-on voltages
(Von ) of the TFT increased after air-annealing, irrespective
of a metal electrode. On the other hand, Von s were dierent
for dierent kinds of metals. Given in order of increasing
Von , the Al electrode is rst with a value of 3 V, followed
by Mo at 0 V, and lastly Cu with 5 V.

It has been known that electrical properties of metal

oxides can be changed by modifying the oxygen content
of the lm because the conduction electrons originate
at oxygen vacancies.21,2325) During air-annealing, oxygen
diused through the surface of a-IGZO in contact with air,
and the Von values of the TFTs increased due to a decrease
of oxygen vacancies in a-IGZO, which is related with the
number of conduction electrons. The more negative Von of
the TFT means that the n-type a-IGZO semiconductor
had greater number of conduction electrons. Some metal
electrodes also reacted with or diused into a-IGZO at the
interface, and the inter-diusion or interfacial reactions
changed the electrical performance of the TFTs. Thus, it was
suggested that the a-IGZO in the TFT with an Al electrode
had the most electrons and the a-IGZO in the TFT with a Cu
electrode had the least electrons, compared to the a-IGZO in
the TFT with Mo.
Sub-threshold slope (SS) is another important electrical
parameter that indicates the performance of a TFT. Figure 1
also shows the value of the SS for the as-deposited and airannealed TFTs with dierent metal electrodes. The SS is the
gate voltage (VG ) necessary to change the drain current by
one decade, as the VG is varied in the range of VG < Vth
(threshold voltage), where the transfer characteristic had a
linear behavior. The SS of the as-deposited TFT with a Mo
electrode was approximately 0.5 V/decade, and it did not
change signicantly after air-annealing. The as-deposited
TFT with an Al electrode had a Von that could not be
observed in the conventional range of VG , and the SS of that
TFT could not be determined from the transfer characteristics. After air-annealing, the value of the SS for the TFT
with an Al electrode was approximately 0.5 V/decade,
which is similar to that of the Mo electrode. The value of
the SS for the as-deposited TFT with a Cu electrode was also
approximately 0.5 V/decade. This value is similar to that of
the air-annealed TFTs with Mo and Al electrodes. However,
the SS value of the air-annealed TFT with a Cu electrode
was approximately 1.0 V/decade.
The value of the SS is proportional to the trap density in
the a-IGZO channel layer and at the interface between the
a-IGZO channel layer and the SiO2 dielectric layer.2628)

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Fig. 2. Cross-sectional, HR-TEM images of the interfacial micro-structures between a-IGZO and the metal electrode: (a) Mo, (b) Al, and (c) Cu. The
a-IGZO lm on the Al electrode was not annealed, whereas the a-IGZO lms on Mo and Cu lms were annealed at 250  C for 1 h.

In this study, because all the TFTs with a dierent metal

electrode were fabricated by the same process except for the
kind of metal, the inter-diusion and interfacial reactions
between the a-IGZO channel layer and the SiO2 dielectric
layer in the a-IGZO could be ignored. These results indicate
that there was no inter-diusion and no interfacial reaction
between the metal and a-IGZO in the TFTs with Al and
Mo electrodes during air-annealing. On the other hand, the
increase in the SS from 0.5 to 1.0 V/decade in the TFT with
a Cu electrode after air-annealing indicates that there was
any inter-diusion or interfacial reaction between Cu and aIGZO that increased the trap density of a-IGZO. Furthermore, the air-annealed TFTs with a Cu electrode had a more
positive Von compared to the TFTs with Al or Mo electrodes.
This result indicates that the Cu ions that migrated from the
Cu electrode into a-IGZO became acceptors in a-IGZO.
In other words, the number of conduction electrons, which
were formed by oxygen vacancies in a-IGZO, decreased due
to Cu in the a-IGZO. It was reported that with increasing Cu
concentration of a Cu-doped ZnO crystal, the concentration
of the conduction electrons decreases rapidly.29) To conrm
the inter-diusion or interface reaction of various metal
electrodes and their eect of the electrical performances,
microstructural/chemical analysis of the metal/a-IGZO
interface was performed.
Figure 2 shows the interfacial microstructures of the metal
and a-IGZO as observed using cross-sectional, high-resolution TEM imaging. The a-IGZO layers were amorphous,
regardless of the metal electrode. The Mo and Cu lm on the
a-IGZO lm were annealed at 250  C for 1 h, whereas the
Al lm on the a-IGZO lm was not annealed after metal
deposition. There was no evidence of an inter-diusion or
interfacial reaction between the metal and a-IGZO for Mo
and Cu even though the samples were annealed after metal
deposition. On the other hand, an aluminum oxide layer
formed at the interface between a-IGZO and Al, which was
conrmed by energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy, even
though the sample was not annealed after metal deposition.
Figure 2(a) indicates that the result of the microstructural
analysis could support the fact that there was no interdiusion and no interfacial reaction between Mo and
a-IGZO during air-annealing. In addition, the Von of the

air-annealed TFT with Mo is 0 V, as shown in Fig. 1(a).

Thus, the a-IGZO in the TFT could be the standard n-type
semiconductor for the performance of a-IGZO TFTs.
Figure 2(b) shows that the aluminum oxide layer formed
at the interface between a-IGZO and Al in the as-deposited
sample. As shown in Fig. 1(b), the as-deposited a-IGZO
TFT with an Al electrode could not be turned o in the
conventional range of VG . This means that the a-IGZO
in the as-deposited TFT with an Al electrode had more
conduction electrons than the a-IGZO in TFTs with other
metal electrodes. Arai et al. reported that a-IGZO TFT
with Ti electrodes formed Ti oxide layer between a-IGZO
and Ti layer, and negative Vth shift occurred due to oxygen
vacancies in a-IGZO.30) Similarly, in the case of the TFT
with an Al electrode, Al on the surface of Al lm reacted
with oxygen diused out of a-IGZO during oxide formation
and the content of oxygen in the a-IGZO semiconductor
decreased. The oxide formation increased the concentration of conduction electrons due to an increase in oxygen
vacancies. Figure 1(b) also shows that, after air-annealing,
the value of the SS for the TFT with an Al electrode was
about 0.5 V/decade, which is similar to the TFT with a Mo
electrode. This indicates that there was no inter-diusion
between Al and a-IGZO through Al oxide and that there
was no change of the trap density in the a-IGZO. The
microstructural analysis (Fig. 2) indicates that there was no
inter-diusion and no interfacial reaction in either Mo/
a-IGZO or Cu/a-IGZO. On the other hand, the electrical
properties (Fig. 1) indicate that the Mo/a-IGZO interface
did not undergo an inter-diusion and interfacial reaction
but the Cu/a-IGZO did because the value of SS change
means the change of trap density. Inter-diusion of elements
in the range of below 1 at. % are dicult to be detected by
TEM while interfacial reactions are easy to be. To conrm
inter-diusion between Cu and a-IGZO during air-annealing, TOF-SIMS analysis was used. Figure 3 shows typical
TOF-SIMS depth proles to compare the Mo/a-IGZO
interface and the Cu/a-IGZO interface chemically before
and after air-annealing.
Selected secondary ion intensities were monitored as a
function of the sputter time (in seconds). As shown in
Figs. 3(a) and 3(b), there was no dierence in the depth

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Fig. 3. (Color online) TOF-SIMS depth proles for the analysis of the chemical reaction at the metal/a-IGZO/SiO2 interface before and after airannealing. (a, b) Mo/a-IGZO/SiO2 lm for the chemical analysis of the Mo/a-IGZO interface. (c, d) Mo/Cu/a-IGZO/SiO2 lm for the chemical analysis of
the Cu/a-IGZO interface.

proles, except for the surface of the Mo lm. There was

an oxidized Mo layer on the surface of the Mo lm in
Fig. 3(b) that was not related to the interaction between
Mo and a-IGZO. On the other hand, in the case of the
Mo/Cu/a-IGZO/SiO2 lm, there was a dierence in the
depth proles of Cu between the as-deposited sample and
the air-annealed sample. The as-deposited sample had a peak
at the interface between Cu and a-IGZO. However, the peak
at the interface in the air-annealed sample disappeared, and
the Cu front edge moved into the a-IGZO layer. Moreover,
In and Si also inter-diused into the layer contacted
with itself. This indicates that, during air-annealing, the Cu
diused into a-IGZO changed the thermodynamic equilibrium of a-IGZO in the TFT with a Cu electrode, and this
change also induced the inter-diusion between a-IGZO
and SiO2 . This reaction changed the value of the SS in the
a-IGZO TFTs with a Cu electrode after air-annealing. Thus,
it was concluded that Cu diused into the a-IGZO during
air-annealing and the diused Cu took eects on the
electrical performance of the TFT.

a-IGZO, which increased the oxygen vacancies in a-IGZO.

The a-IGZO TFT with a Cu electrode had fewer conduction
electrons than those with a Mo or Al electrode because
Cu diused into the a-IGZO channel layer and acted as
an acceptor. Based on the above results, the dierent
performances of the TFTs with dierent metal electrodes
can be attributed to the modication of the a-IGZO defect
chemistry.

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4. Conclusions

The controllability of the performance of a-IGZO TFTs by

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