Advances in Amorphous Oxide Semiconductor Devices, Materials, and Processes for Customizable Scalable Manufacturing of Thin-Film Electronics

Abstract

Electronic circuits comprised of thin-film transistors (TFTs) are essential to nearly every modern display technology. For decades, the TFT industry relied on amorphous silicon, but increasing performance demands required semiconductors with superior electron transport leading to the adoption of amorphous oxide semiconductors (AOS). The superior electron transport and ease of thin-film preparation of AOS has led to a growing interest in developing thin-film electronics for beyond-display technologies. These include monolithic 3D integration on Si complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor integrated circuits (ICs) – to continue Moore’s law, add new functionality, and improve performance – and flexible electronics for electronic skins, textiles, solar cells, and displays. In this thesis we facilitate the adoption of thin-film electronics for beyond-display technologies by: 1) developing uniform and conformal AOS deposition processes with record performance; 2) demonstrating expanded AOS capabilities by exploring new device architectures; and 3) developing a new additive manufacturing technique for customizable scalable manufacturing. First, we meet the performance and thermal budget requirements of AOS for beyond-display applications by using atomic-layer deposition (ALD) – a conformal, uniform, and precise vapor-phase deposition technique – and aggressively optimizing the process conditions. We discovered that improved electrical performance correlated with an increase in film density, which can be achieved by increasing deposition temperature, by post-deposition annealing, and by using plasma enhanced-ALD (PE-ALD). Second, we made innovations in device design to expand the range of circuit applications for AOS TFTs by exploiting the benefit of their wide-bandgap to fabricate high-voltage TFTs (HVTFTs). While the current handling capabilities of these HVTFTs cannot compete with conventional power electronics, the ability to deposit AOS materials directly on Si ICs may enable monolithic 3D integration of HVTFTs, adding new functionality as an HV interface to aggressively scaled low-voltage Si CMOS. Third, we show that ambient instabilities are caused by interactions between the surface of the AOS film and ambient molecules. We eliminate these instabilities by developing an ALD-based passivation layer. Fourth, we study the temporal and bias stress stability of our ALD AOS thin-film transistors and see excellent stability after the first month of aging and improved positive bias stress stability with passivation. Fifth, we investigate several materials to form a Schottky contact to ALD AOS films to enable future rectifier-based circuits and unipolar logic circuits. Finally, we develop an additive manufacturing approach for customizable manufacturing of AOS devices. Further improvement in device performance and reduction of channel length, enabled by the sub-µm precision of EHD, has the potential to yield fully customizable additive manufacturing of high-frequency circuits.