High-mobility hydrogenated polycrystalline In2O3 (In2O3:H) thin-film transistors

Oxide semiconductors have been extensively studied as active channel layers of thin-film transistors (TFTs) for electronic applications. However, the field-effect mobility (mu(FE)) of oxide TFTs is not sufficiently high to compete with that of low-temperature-processed polycrystalline-Si TFTs (50-100 cm(2)V(-1)s(-1)). Here, we propose a simple process to obtain high-performance TFTs, namely hydrogenated polycrystalline In2O3 (In2O3:H) TFTs grown via the low-temperature solid-phase crystallization (SPC) process. In2O3:H TFTs fabricated at 300 degrees C exhibit superior switching properties with mu(FE) = 139.2 cm(2)V(-1)s(-1), a subthreshold swing of 0.19 Vdec(-1), and a threshold voltage of 0.2 V. The hydrogen introduced during sputter deposition plays an important role in enlarging the grain size and decreasing the subgap defects in SPC-prepared In2O3:H. The proposed method does not require any additional expensive equipment and/or change in the conventional oxide TFT fabrication process. We believe these SPC-grown In2O3:H TFTs have a great potential for use in future transparent or flexible electronics applications. The field-effect mobility of oxide semiconductor thin-film transistors is not sufficiently high compared to silicon thin-film transistors. Magari et al. use a low-temperature solid-phase crystallization process to fabricate In2O3 thin-film transistors with mobility comparable to silicon counterparts.