High Mobility a-IGZO TFT with Nano-Dots Doping
Wu-Wei Tsai1, Hsiao-Wen Zan*1,
Chia-Hsin Chen1, Chuang-Chuang Tsai1, and Hsin-Fei Meng2
1
Department of Photonics and Institute of Electro-Optical Engineering, National Chiao Tung
University and 2Institute of Physics, National Chiao Tung University
1001 Ta Hsueh Rd, HsinChu, Taiwan
*TEL: +886-3-5131305, FAX: +886-3-5737681, e-mail: hsiaowen@mail.nctu.edu.tw
Abstract
A high mobility (~79 cm2/Vs) amorphous In-Ga-Zn-O
(a-IGZO) thin-film transistors (TFTs) with high output
driving current has been demonstrated. We used a new
structure with nano-dots doping on the channel of
semiconductor devices. This device is proposed to increase
the field-effect mobility 17 times larger than that of the
control sample. The influence of dots concentration and the
doping concentration on device characteristics were
investigated. In addition, we also studied the bottom gate
device with NDD. We successfully demonstrate an effective
and simple concept to improve device characteristics.
1. Introduction
With a high mobility (>10 cm2/Vs) and a low threshold
voltage (< 5 V) under low temperature process, amorphous
In-Ga-Zn-O thin-film transistors (a-IGZO TFTs) draw a lot of
attentions due to their applications on flexible display, level
shifter, drivers, or the pixel driving circuit for active-matrix
organic-light-emitting-diode (OLED) display. [1-3]. Electron
mobilities of most reported a-IGZO TFTs are smaller than 35
cm2/Vs. When high-k gate dielectric or multilayer gate
insulator is used, mobility can be as high as 62 or 124 cm2/Vs,
respectively [3,4]. In this report, a new method named as the
nano-dots doping (NDD) is proposed to increase electron
mobility to be 17 times larger than the control. In addition,
self-aligned structure eliminates the overlaps between gate
electrode and source/drain contacts to suppress the parasitic
capacitance and to enable a faster response. The influences of
the proposed NDD treatment on conventional bottom-gate
a-IGZO TFT are also investigated. A 2-times improvement on
electron mobility by NDD treatment is observed.
2. Experiment
The proposed nano-dots doping (NDD) is realized by using
Ar plasma to treat the channel region through a porous hard
mask. Top-gate (TG) and bottom-gate (BG) structures with
NDD and without NDD (named STD in this paper) are
fabricated. Four device structures (TG-STD, TG-NDD,
BG-STD, BG-NDD) are depicted in Fig. 1. The channel
width and length are 3000μm and 500μm, respectively.
Process flow to fabricate TG-NDD is shown in Fig. 2(a). For
BG-NDD, process flow is the same as TG-NDD while the
glass substrate is replaced by a 100-nm silicon nitride capped
heavily-doped silicon substrate. As shown in Fig. 2, a
35-nm-thick a-IGZO (3-in. circular target: In:Ga:Zn = 1:1:1
at%) is deposited by radio-frequency (RF) sputtering onto
glass substrate through a shadow mask to form the active
layer at room temperature. Then, 420nm-poly(4-vinyl
phenol)(PVP) is deposited and annealing for 1hr to serve as
the insulator. The surface of PVP is coated by spontaneous
distributed polystyrene spheres (Merck, K6-020) with
different concentrations as shown by the scanning electron
microscope (SEM) images in Fig. 2(b). A 100 nm aluminum
is deposited as gate electrode. After removing the polystyrene
spheres by an adhesive tape (Scotch, 3M), the PVP at sites
without Al coverage is removed by 9 min 150 W O2 plasma
treatment. The a-IGZO under the porous gate electrode is
treated by Ar plasma to increase the doping concentration.
Finally, a 100 nm-thick Al is deposited through a shadow
mask to form the source and drain contacts. The SEM image
of the cross sectional view of the TG-NDD device is shown in
Fig. 2(c). As shown in Fig. 3(a), the resistivity of the a-IGZO
thin film is drastically reduced from >105 Ωcm to 3.85 Ωcm
after Ar plasma treatment. Park et al.[5] proposed that during
Ar plasma treatment, the net electron carrier concentration of
the a-IGZO thin films is rapidly increased compared to the
as-deposited a-IGZO film due to the oxygen deficient IGZO
stoichiometry rather than the compositional change of the In,
Ga, and Zn cations.
High conductivity IGZO
(a) (b)
Al(Gate)
Al(Gate)
Al(D) PVP Al(S) PVP
IGZO IGZO
Glass Glass
Top gate(TG) devices
(c) (d)
IGZO IGZO
SiNx SiNx
Si-P+ Si-P+
Bottom gate(BG) devices
Fig. 1 Schematic device structures. (a) and (b) is top gate (TG) of
a-IGZO TFTs without and with NDD；(c) and (d) is bottom gate
(BG) of a-IGZO TFTs without and with NDD.
3. Results and Discussion
A. The comparison between TG-STD and
TG-NDD a-IGZO TFTs with different dots
concentration
The transfer characteristics of TG-STD and TG-NDD
devices with different dots concentration are shown in Fig.
3(b). The device performance is improved when the dots
concentration is increased. Typical parameters are listed in
the inset of Fig. 3(b). Devices with high-density dots doping B. The influence of doping concentration on
(TG-NDD with PS of 0.8w.t%) exhibit high mobility (~79 BG-NDD a-IGZO TFT
cm2/Vs). The transfer characteristics of BG a-IGZO TFTs with
(a) Polystyrene sphere (b) and without NDD are shown in Fig. 4. The mobility can be
improved over 10 times with NDD. However, the leakage
0.2 w.t% current of off state is rapidly increased while the Ar plasma
PVP PVP treatment time is over 3 min. The leakage path is from the
IGZO IGZO back channel due to the enhanced conductivity of back
Glass Glass channel by Ar treatment. Typical parameters are listed in
Table 2. The mobility is 13.2 cm2/Vs and the on/off ratio is
Remove 2.1×109.
Gate 0.8 w.t%
PS spheres 10-2
BG-STD Ar treat 2mins
10-3 BG-NDD Ar treat 2mins
PVP 10-4 BG-NDD Ar treat 3mins
IGZO IGZO
Glass Glass 10-5
10-6
10-7
(c)

ID (A)
10-8
High conductivity
Al(D) Al(S) Al(100nm) 10-9 PVP
PVP(400nm)
10-10 IGZO
IGZO IGZO IGZO(50nm) SiNx
Si-P+
Glass Glass 10-11
10-12 IGZO
10-13 SiNx
Fig. 2 (a) The process flow of the TG-NDD a-IGZO TFT (b) SEM Si-P+
images of 0.2 w.t% and 0.8w.t% polystyrene spheres with diameters 10-14
of 200nm on the substrate. (c) SEM image of the cross sectional -20 -10 0 10 20 30
view of the TG-NDD a-IGZO TFTs. Vg-Vt (V)

6 Fig. 4 The transfer characteristics of BG-NDD TFTs with and

10 without nano-dots doping.
10
5 (a)
Resistivity (cm)

4
10 4. Conclusion
10
3 A new structure of a-IGZO TFT with nano-meter-scale dotted
channel doping is proposed. With a simple process, mobility
2
10 of a-IGZO TFT becomes 17 times larger than control and
1
3.85  cm reaches 79 cm2/Vs. The proposed NDD concept is verified in
10
a-IGZO TFTs, and is promising for many other devices like
0
10 organic TFTs.
-1
10
0 50 100 150 200 250 300 5. Acknowledgements
Ar plasma time (sec) This work is supported by the National Science
10-3
TG - STD Council of Taiwan under Contract No. NSC
10-4 TG - NDD (PS 0.2w.t%) (b) 99-2628-E-009-010.
TG - NDD (PS 0.8w.t%)
10-5

10-6
References
10-7
ID(A)

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