High Performance Zinc Oxide Thin Film Transistors Through Improved Material Processing and Device Design

Solution processing (SP) is a cheap, simple and high-throughput method for the fabrication of ZnO thin film transistors (TFTs). Lack of enhancement mode operation, poor crystallinity, traps, and poor control of the carrier concentration are some of the disadvantages of this method. The high intrinsic electron concentration of SP-ZnO makes saturation of TFTs non-trivial. We report on Schottky barrier thin film transistors (SB-TFT). By biasing the source Schottky contact in reverse bias, a depletion region is formed around the source contact hence depleting the region from the free charge carriers which produces the saturation of the device. The effect of the Schottky contact is illustrated by comparing the operation of SB-TFTs with that of conventional TFTs.