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Direct Inkjet Printing of Silver Source/Drain Electrodes on an Amorphous InGaZnO Layer for Thin-Film Transistors - PubMed

  • ️Sun Jan 01 2017

Direct Inkjet Printing of Silver Source/Drain Electrodes on an Amorphous InGaZnO Layer for Thin-Film Transistors

Honglong Ning et al. Materials (Basel). 2017.

Abstract

Printing technologies for thin-film transistors (TFTs) have recently attracted much interest owing to their eco-friendliness, direct patterning, low cost, and roll-to-roll manufacturing processes. Lower production costs could result if electrodes fabricated by vacuum processes could be replaced by inkjet printing. However, poor interfacial contacts and/or serious diffusion between the active layer and the silver electrodes are still problematic for achieving amorphous indium-gallium-zinc-oxide (a-IGZO) TFTs with good electrical performance. In this paper, silver (Ag) source/drain electrodes were directly inkjet-printed on an amorphous a-IGZO layer to fabricate TFTs that exhibited a mobility of 0.29 cm²·V-1·s-1 and an on/off current ratio of over 10⁵. To the best of our knowledge, this is a major improvement for bottom-gate top-contact a-IGZO TFTs with directly printed silver electrodes on a substrate with no pretreatment. This study presents a promising alternative method of fabricating electrodes of a-IGZO TFTs with desirable device performance.

Keywords: a-IGZO; inkjet printing; silver ink; thin film transistors.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1

(a) Structure of printed S/D electrodes TFT; (b) the final device we have fabricated.

Figure 2
Figure 2

Inkjet-printed Ag S/D electrodes based on Al:Nd/Al2O3:Nd/a-IGZO with different drop spaces: (a) 35 µm; (b) 40 µm; (c) 45 µm.

Figure 3
Figure 3

Output characteristic curves (IDS–VDS) (a) and transfer characteristic curves (IDS–VGS) (b) of manufactured a-IGZO TFTs with inkjet-printed Ag S/D electrodes as a function of substrate temperatures. VGS is varied from 20 to −20 V with VDS = 10.1 V.

Figure 4
Figure 4

EDS mapping of Ag printed S/D electrodes TFTs with substrate temperature at (a) room temperature and (b) 60 °C.

Figure 5
Figure 5

EELS line scanning of a-IGZO/Ag interfaces with printed substrate temperature at (a) room temperature and (b) 60 °C; the x axis step size of the right pictures is 0.3 nm.

Figure 5
Figure 5

EELS line scanning of a-IGZO/Ag interfaces with printed substrate temperature at (a) room temperature and (b) 60 °C; the x axis step size of the right pictures is 0.3 nm.

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