Much of the thin-film research involving zinc oxide materials has focused on the addition of metal cations, such as indium with gallium, hafnium, zirconium and lanthanide. When used in semiconductors, these exhibit mobility values from 5 to 20cm2/Vs.
"For future electronic devices, the mobility of the active oxide channel materials needs to be above 100cm2/Vs," said Sanghun Jeon, associate professor in the Department of Applied Physics and Department of Display and Semiconductor Physics at Korea University.
Jeon's group and their colleagues in the Analytical Engineering Group at the Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology built a zinc oxynitride (ZnON) transistor with electron mobilities about ten times greater than their previous thin-film transistors. They made the transistor from ZnON, which is plasma treated with argon gas.
Active oxide semiconductors, such as ZnON, provide a variety of benefits, such as a low cost of production and a relatively low temperature of fabrication: below 300°C. Making them suitable for display applications and making them easy to integrate with a variety of other inorganic and organic materials.
When subjected to conductance tests, the semiconductor speed, of the group’s thin-film transistor was found to be 138cm2/Vs, much higher than that of the group's previous indium-gallium-zinc-oxide film.
"We believe that ZnON, tailored by reactive sputtering and plasma processes, will constitute another significant breakthrough in the field of thin-film electronics," Jeon added.
