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Enhanced performance of a-IGZO thin-film transistors by forming AZO/IGZO heterojunction

source/drain contacts

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2011 Semicond. Sci. Technol. 26 055003

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IOP PUBLISHING SEMICONDUCTOR SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
Semicond. Sci. Technol. 26 (2011) 055003 (5pp) doi:10.1088/0268-1242/26/5/055003

Enhanced performance of a-IGZO

thin-film transistors by forming
AZO/IGZO heterojunction source/drain
contacts
Xiao Zou1,2 , Guojia Fang1,3 , Jiawei Wan1 , Nishuang Liu1 , Hao Long1 ,
Haolin Wang1 and Xingzhong Zhao1
1
Department of Electronic Science and Technology, Key Laboratory of Artificial Micro- and
Nano-structures of Ministry of Education, School of Physics and Technology, Wuhan University, Wuhan,
Hubei 430072, People’s Republic of China
2
Department of Electromachine Engineering, Jianghan University, Wuhan, Hubei 430056,
People’s Republic of China
E-mail: gjfang@whu.edu.cn

Received 15 September 2010, in final form 26 November 2010

Published 11 March 2011
Online at stacks.iop.org/SST/26/055003

Abstract
A low-cost Al-doped ZnO (AZO) thin film was deposited by radio-frequency magnetron
sputtering with different Ar/O2 flow ratios. The optical and electrical properties of an AZO
film were investigated. A highly conductive AZO film was inserted between the amorphous
InGaZnO (a-IGZO) channel and the metal Al electrode to form a heterojunction source/drain
contact, and bottom-gate amorphous a-IGZO thin-film transistors (TFTs) with a high κ HfON
gate dielectric were fabricated. The AZO film reduced the source/drain contact resistivity
down to 79  cm. Enhanced device performance of a-IGZO TFT with Al/AZO bi-layer S/D
electrodes (W /L = 500/40 μm) was achieved with a saturation mobility of 13.7 cm2 V−1 s−1 ,
a threshold voltage of 0.6 V, an on-off current ratio of 4.7 × 106 , and a subthreshold gate
voltage swing of 0.25 V dec−1 . It demonstrated the potential application of the AZO film as a
promising S/D contact material for the fabrication of the high performance TFTs.
(Some figures in this article are in colour only in the electronic version)

1. Introduction improve the subthreshold gate voltage swing of the TFTs by

Transparent conducting oxide (TCO)-based thin-film
transistors (TFTs) have been widely applied in active-
matrix liquid crystal displays and organic light-emitting diode
displays, since the first amorphous InGaZnO4 (a-IGZO) film
deposited at room temperature was reported by Nomura
et al [1]. The a-IGZO film is preferred as a channel
layer of TFTs due to its high electron mobility and low
processing temperature. Many efforts had been focused
on the applications of high-κ gate dielectrics for the a-
IGZO TFTs, such as SiNx [2], Al2 O3 [3], Y2 O3 [4], and
ZrO2 [5], which can enhance the driving capability and
3 Author to whom any correspondence should be addressed.
increasing the gate capacitance density and decreasing the
interface trap density. We also fabricated a-IGZO TFTs by
using Ba0.6 Sr0.4 TiO3 , HfO2 and HfON high-κ gate dielectrics
[6, 7]. Device performance with saturation mobility and
on–off current ratio were achieved as 8–12 cm2 V−1 s−1
and 105 –107 , respectively. Further enhancement of device
performance should be achieved by reducing S/D resistance,
because the degradation of driving capability often results from
the presence of a high resistivity of the metal–semiconductor
contact.
Recently, many research groups have been devoted to
improving the electrical properties of electrode materials [8, 9].
Ar or H2 plasma treatment and many metal candidates such as
Au, Ag, Mo, Ti and Al were already studied [2, 4, 10–13].

0268-1242/11/055003+05$33.00 1 © 2011 IOP Publishing Ltd Printed in the UK & the USA
Semicond. Sci. Technol. 26 (2011) 055003 X Zou et al

As a transparent source/drain (S/D) electrode, most

applications have been focused on indium tin oxide (ITO) (a)
and indium zinc oxide (IZO). However, they are endangered
by the scarcity and high price of In. Al-doped ZnO (AZO) thin
film has become a good alternative for transparent electrode
applications [14–16], due to its low resistivity on the order of
10−4  cm, inexpensive source materials, and transparency in
the near UV and visible range. Na et al [17] also reported that a
highly conductive a-IGZO buffer layer helped to form a good
Ohmic contact between a-IGZO channel and Al electrodes.
In this study, we advanced novel heterojunction S/D contacts
to enhance the performance of a-IGZO TFTs, by inserting
a highly conductive AZO buffer layer between the a-IGZO
active channel and Al electrodes. The properties of the AZO
film, saturation mobility, on/off current ratio and subthreshold (b)
gate voltage swing of the a-IGZO TFTs with Al/AZO bi-
layer S/D electrodes were systematically investigated. It
was demonstrated that the a-IGZO TFT with AZO/IGZO
heterojunction S/D contacts shows the improved mobility and
the subthreshold gate voltage swing compared to the TFTs
with uni-Al S/D electrodes.

2. Experimental details

For the transmittance and Hall measurements, the AZO thin

film was deposited on fused silica by sputtering a ZnO
target doped with 3 wt% Al2 O3 and using a radio-frequency
(RF) magnetron sputtering system. The fused silica was
cleaned with successive rinses in ultrasonic baths of acetone,
ethanol and de-ionized water, and blown dry by N2 . Prior to
deposition, the chamber was pumped down to a base pressure
of 3 × 10−4 Pa. During the AZO film deposition, a mixture
of high-purity Ar and O2 was introduced into the chamber
by mass-flow controllers with an Ar/O2 flow ratio of 10/0,
10/5 and 10/10, respectively. The chamber pressure and
substrate temperature were maintained at 1 Pa and 300 ◦ C,
respectively.
The native oxide layer on the p+ silicon substrate surface
was removed by a diluted HF solution followed by ultrasonic
agitation in de-ionized water. The cleaned wafer was
immediately transferred into the RF sputtering chamber after
drying by N2 . The HfON film with a nominal thickness of
100 nm was prepared by sputtering a HfO2 (99.9% purity)
target in Ar plus N2 ambient [7]. The a-IGZO channel
material with a nominal thickness of 50 nm was deposited
at room temperature by pulsed laser deposition with a KrF
(248 nm) laser [6]. To form the top S/D contact, the AZO
film with a nominal thickness of 100 nm was deposited on the
patterned a-IGZO film by RF sputtering with an Ar flow ratio
of 10 sccm. Then Al was deposited on the AZO and on the
backside of the Si substrate as the contact electrodes, by using
a RF sputtering metal Al target in Ar ambient. All patterning
processes were achieved with photolithographic methods and
wet etching processes. Consequently, the a-IGZO TFTs with a
HfON high-κ gate dielectric and a heterojunction S/D contact
were achieved. The a-IGZO TFTs with uni-Al S/D electrodes
deposited by using RF sputtering in Ar ambient were also
fabricated for comparison purpose.
Figure 1. Optical and electrical properties of the AZO films
deposited at 300 ◦ C under various Ar/O2 flow ratios: (a) optical
transmission spectra, (b) resistivity, carrier concentration and Hall
mobility.
The transmittance of the AZO films was measured by a
UV–visible (VIS)-near IR (NIR) spectrophotometer (CARY
5000, Varian, Australia) in the 200–800 nm wavelength
range at room temperature. The electrical resistivity, carrier
concentration and mobility of the AZO films were measured
by a Hall effect measurement system (HMS 2000). The
electrical transport properties of the TFTs were measured using
a Keithley 4200 precision semiconductor parameter analyzer.
All electrical measurements were carried out under a light-
tight and electrically shielded condition.
3. Results and discussion
Figure 1(a) shows the optical transmission spectra of the films
deposited at 300 ◦ C with different Ar/O2 flow ratios. All
the films show a high transmittance of ∼80% throughout the
visible spectrum, which is important for transparent electronic
application. Obvious reflectance should be ascribed to the
plasma resonance of electron gas in the conduction band,
which is consistent with the AZO films deposited by pulse
laser ablation [15]. Figure 1(b) shows the relationship between
the electrical properties (resistivity, Hall mobility and carrier
concentration) of the AZO film and the deposition ambient
(Ar/O2 flow ratio). It can be seen that the electrical properties
are strongly influenced by the O2 flow ratio during the
deposition of the AZO film. The resistivity of the AZO film
decreased to the lowest value of 3.7 × 10−4  cm in a pure

2
Semicond. Sci. Technol. 26 (2011) 055003 X Zou et al

(a)

Figure 2. Schematic structure of the a-IGZO TFT with

heterojunction S/D contacts.

Ar ambient (Ar/O2 flow ratio of 10/0). The lowest resistivity (b)

may be ascribed to the reduction of oxygen interstitials which
can act as electron trapping centers. From this viewpoint,
pure Ar ambient revealed the most optimum condition for the
preparation of a highly conductive AZO electrode.
Figure 2 shows the structure of the a-IGZO TFT with a
bottom-gate and top-contact heterojunction S/D electrodes.
The carrier concentration, resistivity, and Hall mobility of
the a-IGZO active channel are about 2.9 × 1015 cm−3 ,
66  cm and 32 cm2 V−1 s−1 , respectively. The typical
output characteristics of a-IGZO TFTs with uni-Al or Al/AZO
bi-layer S/D electrodes are depicted in figure 3. It can
be seen from figure 3 that the saturation current for the a-
IGZO TFT with Al/AZO bi-layer S/D electrodes is 0.42
Figure 3. Output characteristics of the a-IGZO TFTs with a W /L =
mA at bias of VDS = VGS = 4 V, while the TFT with 500/40 μm, (a) the TFT with uni-Al electrodes, (b) the TFT with
uni-Al electrodes shows a drain current of 0.20 mA at the Al/AZO bi-layer electrodes.
same drain and gate bias voltage, indicating that a AZO
buffer layer can effectively increase the driving current by
improving the S/D contact. The increased drain current of
the a-IGZO TFT with Al/AZO bi-layer electrodes should be
interpreted in the same approach as the conventional metal-
oxide–semiconductor transistor structures, namely the AZO
buffer layer reduces the parasitic contact resistance between
the Al electrode and the channel layer [13, 17]. Furthermore,
the output curves of the a-IGZO TFT with Al electrodes
show obvious current crowding at low VDS (<0.2 V), whereas
the drain current of the a-IGZO TFT with Al/AZO bi-
layer electrodes shows a steep rise in the low VDS region,
which further indicates the low contact resistivity of the
Al/AZO/IGZO structure.
The transfer characteristics of the a-IGZO TFTs (W /L =
Figure 4. Transfer characteristics of the a-IGZO TFTs with a
500/40 μm) are shown in figure 4. An on-off current ratio of W /L = 500/40 μm.
4.7 × 106 at 4 V for the TFT with Al/AZO bi-layer electrodes
can be achieved, which is larger than that of the TFT with Al
is derived from the following equation under the condition
electrodes (3.3 × 106 ). However, these values are lower than
VDS > VGS − Vth :
those of our previous results due to the presence of a slightly
high carrier concentration [7]. The maximum OFF-state μsat Ci W
IDS = (VGS − Vth )2 (1)
current (∼10−10 A) is mainly attributed to the gate leakage 2L
current, which is propitious to reduce the power consumption, where Ci is the gate dielectric capacitance, W /L is the width-
because the operating TFTs for display spends most of their to-length ratio of the TFT device, Vth is determined as a
duty cycle in the OFF-state. The saturation mobility (μsat ) horizontal-axis intercept of a linear fitting to the IDS 1/2 −VGS

3
Semicond. Sci. Technol. 26 (2011) 055003
plot. The saturation mobility μsat of the a-IGZO TFT with
Al/AZO bi-layer S/D electrodes is calculated as 13.7 cm2 V−1
s−1 , which is higher than that of the TFT with Al electrodes
(9.2 cm2 V−1 s−1 ), and higher than that reported in [7]. The
threshold voltages are extracted as 0.18 and 0.6 V for a-IGZO
TFTs with uni-Al electrodes and Al/AZO bi-layer electrodes,
respectively. A reliable pinch-off at zero gate bias voltage
can be found for the a-IGZO TFT with Al/AZO bi-layer S/D
electrodes, while the IDS of ∼10−8 A at zero bias for the TFT
with Al electrodes should increase the power consumption.
The subthreshold gate voltage swing (SS) can be extracted
using the following equation:

∂VGS 
SS =  . (2)
∂(log IDS ) 
VDS =con
The SS is estimated to be about 0.48 and 0.25 V dec−1 for
TFTs with Al electrodes and Al/AZO electrodes, respectively.
The a-IGZO TFT with Al/AZO bi-layer S/D electrodes can
be found to improve subthreshold swing compared to the
TFT with uni-Al S/D electrodes, even though the TFTs have
identical materials and preparation process for channel and
gate dielectric, which should be attributed to an increased
driving current resulting from a decreased S/D contact
resistance.
These enhanced performances reflected by the saturation
mobility, subthreshold swing, and driving capability of the a-
IGZO TFT with Al/AZO bi-layer electrodes are ascribed to the
decreased contact resistance by inserting a highly conductive
AZO film between the Al metal and the a-IGZO S/D regions.
The total resistance (RTOT ) of the TFT can be evaluated by
using the gated transmission line method (TLM) in the linear
region [11]:
VSD L Research Program of Wuhan Science and Technology Bureau
RTOT = = + RSD (3)
ISD μsat WCi (VGS − Vth )
where RSD and RCH were the contact and the channel sheet
resistance, respectively. For the TFTs with various gate length
(L1 , L2 ) at the same gate and drain bias voltage
RTOT1 − RSD RTOT2 − RSD
= (4)
L1 L2
where RTOT1 and RTOT2 are related to L1 and L2 , respectively.
Thus we can obtain the RSD as follow:
L2 RTOT1 − L1 RTOT2
RSD = . (5)
L 2 − L1
Subsequently, the width-normalized S/D resistivity (RSD W )
is calculated as 143 and 79  cm for the a-IGZO TFT with
uni-Al and Al/AZO bi-layer electrodes, respectively. The
present RSD W of 79  cm is lower than 330  cm of Pt/Ti/Ar
plasma-treated IGZO S/D contact resistivity reported by Park
et al [12], and nearly the same as the result in [11]. It should be
noted that the resistivity of the Al/AZO/IGZO heterojunction
S/D contact is higher than 34  cm of the Mo/hydrogen-doped
IGZO S/D contact reported by Sato et al [10]; however, simple
process condition and low cost of source material illuminate
that the proposed heterojunction S/D structure will play a
significant role in improving the device performance of a-
IGZO TFTs.
4
X Zou et al
4. Conclusions
A heterojunction S/D contact was applied to improve the
performance of the a-IGZO TFTs. The S/D region was
capped with a highly conductive and low-cost AZO buffer
layer prior to the deposition of metal Al. A simple approach to
estimate the S/D contact resistivity (RSD ) was advanced based
on the TLM method. The calculated result showed that the
contact resistance of Al/AZO/a-IGZO was decreased down
to 79  cm, thus indicating a superior Ohmic property in
the heterojunction S/D structure. The a-IGZO TFT (W/L
= 500/40 μm) with Al/AZO bi-layer electrodes exhibited
enhanced performance compared to the TFT with uni-Al
electrodes, such as the saturation mobility raised above 30%
and the subthreshold swing reduced about a half. These results
demonstrated the potential application of the AZO film as a
promising S/D contact material for the fabrication of high-
performance a-IGZO TFTs. It is expected that low carrier
concentration of the IGZO channel film and the optimum
channel/gate dielectric interface can be obtained to further
improve the on-off current ratio and the subthreshold gate
voltage swing.
Acknowledgments
This work was partially supported by 973 Program
(2011CB933300) of China, the National High Technology
Research and Development Program of China
(2009AA03Z219), the China Postdoctoral Science Foun-
dation (20090451064), the China Postdoctoral Special
Assistance (201003492), the Youth Foundation of Hubei
Provincial Department of Education (Q20104502), the
(201051099415-03), and the Natural Science Foundation of
Jiangsu Province (BK2009143). This work has benefited
from technical support from several co-workers including
Jianhua Wei and Yuping Liu.
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