Ultra-thin top-gate insulator of atomic-layer-deposited HfOx for amorphous InGaZnO thin-film transistors

In recent years, high-k gate dielectrics have attracted increasing attention in amorphous oxide semiconductor (AOS) thin-film transistors (TFTs), due to the urge for stronger gate controllability in advanced applications of high integration density. In this work, the ultra-thin top-gate insulator of atomic-layer-deposited (ALD) HfOx was developed for the amorphous indium-gallium-zinc oxide (a-IGZO) TFTs. Despite the good electrical characteristics of the 4-nm HfOx-gated a-IGZO transistor, its reliability is considerably poor and ascribed to the abundant interface defects, for example, oxygen vacancies. The interface reaction between HfOx and a-IGZO during the ALD process is clarified to be responsible for such defect generation. To prevent the oxygen-related reaction, the a-IGZO channel is pre-treated using the strong oxidizing plasma, contributing to significantly enhanced electrical stabilities. However, the further thinner HfOx would readily increase the gate leakage current, since the electron can easily tunnel through the ultra-thin HfOx due to the low conduction band offset between HfOx and AOS. The 4-nm ALD HfOx together with the pre-oxidization contributes to the optimal performance and stability of top-gate a-IGZO TFT.