J Electroceram (2014) 32:220223
DOI 10.1007/s10832-013-9876-y
The performance and negative bias illumination stability
of Hf-In-Zn-O thin film transistors on sputtering conditions
Hyun-Suk Kim & Jin-Seong Park
Received: 3 September 2013 / Accepted: 22 September 2013 / Published online: 26 November 2013
# Springer Science+Business Media New York 2013
Abstract This study examined the performance and stability
of amorphous Hf-In-Zn-O (a-HIZO) thin film transistors
(TFTs) with different sputtering conditions (DC and RF) for
the active layer. The field-effect mobility and stability under
negative bias illumination stress for the DC device significant-
ly improved to 13.7 cm2/Vs and 1.5 V shift of threshold
voltage, respectively, compared to those (2.4 cm2/Vs and
2.4 V shift) for the RF device. It is suggested that the
incorporation of hydrogen into the RF-sputtered HIZO film
has generated larger defect states in the vicinity of the HIZO/
gate insulator interface, which may act as hole trap centers.
This work demonstrates that the oxide TFTs combined with
DC magnetron sputtering will be a prominent candidate for
commercial production of the TFT backplane toward next-
generation display applications.
Keywords Hf-In-Zn-O (HIZO) . negative bias illumination
stability (NBIS) . oxide semiconductor . thin film transistor
1 Introduction
Flexible and transparent displays based on organic light emit-
ting diodes (OLEDs) have attracted interest because they are
considered to create new applications of electronics. The reli-
able transparent thin film transistors (TFTs) showing good
electrical performance is indispensable for the displays and
H.<S. Kim
Display Device Laboratory, Samsung Advanced Institute of
Technology, Samsung Electronics Corporation, Yongin-Si,
Gyeonggi-Do 446-712, Republic of Korea
J.<S. Park (*)
Division of Materials Science and Engineering, Hanyang University,
222 Wangsimni-ro, Seoul 133-719, Republic of Korea
e-mail: jsparklime@hanyang.ac.kr
should be manufactured at low temperature. In recent times,
flat panel display (FPD) panels demand high resolution, high
frame rate, and large size. As the display size and resolution
increase, backplane TFT arrays with good uniformity, low cost,
high mobility, and high stability are required [1]. Conventional
amorphous silicon (a-Si) TFTs can be fabricated with high
uniformity and low cost; however, their mobility (below
1 cm2/Vs) and bias stability are not sufficient. Additionally,
low temperature polysilicon (LTPS) TFT has disadvantages for
large size fabrication due to relatively poor uniformity and high
cost [2]. For these reasons, oxide semiconductor based TFTs
have been considered as a promising candidate for the driving
and switching device of next-generation active-matrix OLEDs
[24]. In this regard, transparent oxide TFTs using ZnO [5], In
ZnO [6, 7], ZnSnO [8, 9], and InGaZnO [1012], and
Hf-In-Zn-O [13, 14] as an active channel have been widely
studied. However, the stability of oxide TFTs under real display
operating conditions such as negative bias illumination stress
(NBIS) is still a problem to be resolved [14, 15].
Up to date, oxide semiconductors have been fabricated using
a variety of deposition methods, such as magnetron sputtering
[59, 1115], evaporation [16], pulsed laser deposition [10, 17],
solgel [18], and atomic layer deposition [19]. Among these
processes, the most preferred method in production lines is
magnetron sputtering using a ceramic target due to its high
controllability, high deposition rate, and large area deposition
at relatively low temperature [20, 21]. Indeed, many research
groups have reported the fabrication of oxide TFTs by direct
current (DC) or radio frequency (RF) magnetron sputtering
[59, 1115]. However, to our best knowledge, there are few
reports on the detailed comparison between DC and RF-
sputtered oxide TFTs [22], which results in further optimization
of the sputtering condition (i.e., plasma excitation mode) in
order to achieve high stability oxide TFTs.
In this work, we investigate the performance and stability
of oxide TFTs with amorphous Hf-In-Zn-O (a-HIZO) channel
J Electroceram (2014) 32:220223 221

Fig. 1 (a) Schematic diagram of White Light

the HIZO TFTs adopting an etch
stopper along with an incoming (a)
light provided by the LED
backlight unit. (b) Initial transfer
curves of the TFT devices with Mo Mo Etch Stopper
the DC- and RF-grown HIZO
channel. (c) Shifts in Vth as a
function of stress time upon NBIS HIZO
Gate
Mo Insulator

glass substrate

-3
10
0.0
(b) (c) DC
-5
10 -0.5 RF
DC
-7 RF
10 -1.0

(V)
IDS (A)

-9
10 VDS = 10 V -1.5

th
V
-11
10 -2.0

-13
10 -2.5

-15
10 -3.0
-30 -15 0 15 30 0 1 2 3

VGS (V) Stress time (hour)

layer, which is deposited by DC and RF sputtering methods.
The cation composition and deposition rates of DC- and RF-
grown HIZO films were made identical by controlling the DC
and RF power applied to HIZO target during the deposition. It
is found that the RF device suffers from smaller field-effect
mobility (FE) and larger shifts in threshold voltage (Vth) upon
NBIS, which may be attributed to higher oxygen and hydro-
gen incorporation, respectively, during the HIZO growth, as
confirmed by secondary ion mass spectroscopy (SIMS)
analysis.
Zn-O target. The deposition was done at room temperature in a
mixed atmosphere of Ar and O2 at a fixed total pressure of 5
mTorr, where the Ar/O2 gas flow ratio was 90/10. The DC and
RF sputtering power were 80 and 150 W, respectively. The
cation composition of the as-deposited HIZO films was mea-
sured by inductively coupled plasma atomic emission spec-
troscopy (ICP-AES). The deposition rate for both DC-and RF-
sputtered HIZO films was controlled to be about 50 /min, and
confirmed by spectroscopic ellipsometry. The microstructure
and crystallinity of the HIZO films were observed in detail by

2 Experimental procedures
(a) SiOx ES (b) SiOx ES

The HIZO films with a thickness of 40 nm were grown by DC

and RF magnetron sputtering, using a polycrystalline Hf-In-

Table 1 Extracted electrical parameters of DC- and RF-sputtered HIZO

TFTs
HIZO (RF) HIZO (DC)
Device FE (cm2/Vs) Vth (V) S (V/decade) Ion/off
2 nm 2 nm
DC 13.73 1.39 0.18 2.21012
RF 2.43 6.84 0.27 1.11011 Fig. 2 High resolution cross-sectional TEM image and FFT pattern
(inset) of (a) RF- and (b) DC-sputtered HIZO films
222 J Electroceram (2014) 32:220223

Table 2 Summary on the material properties of DC- and RF-grown
HIZO films
Material properties
Deposition rate (/min)
Composition (Hf:In:Zn)
Density (g/cm3)
Roughness ()
Refractive index
Band gap (eV)
transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and fast Fourier
transformation (FFT) analysis. High-resolution x-ray reflectiv-
ity (XRR) measurements were performed to analyze the rough-
ness and density of the HIZO films. The distribution and depth
profiles of the constituent elements in HIZO films were inves-
tigated using secondary ion mass spectroscopy (SIMS). SIMS
was recorded by the sputtering of 2 keV100 nA Cs+ ion beam
and the data acquisition of 25 keV1 pA Bi3+ ion beam with
the incident angle of 40. Optical bandgap analysis was
performed using the Tauc method [23], and the refractive index
(at the wavelength of 632.8 nm) was determined by using a
spectroscopic ellipsometer.
A bottom-gate-type HIZO TFT with a 200 nm-thick SiO2
etch stopper layer was fabricated on a 4-inch glass substrate,
30
(a)
25
O2 Intensity (arb. units)
of which the fabrication procedure is described in detail in a
former publication [24]. The HIZO active layer with a thick-
DC RF ness of 40 nm was deposited onto a dielectric stack of a 350-
nm-thick SiNx and a 50-nm-thick SiOx through DC and RF
52 54 sputtering process, as previously described. The fabricated
9.8:55.2:34.7 9.6:54.7:35.8 devices were subjected to thermal annealing at 300 C for
6.80 6.85 1 h in air. The channel width and length of the TFTs were 50
7.74 7.72 and 10 m, respectively. The transfer characteristics and bias
2.050 2.046 stability of the TFTs were characterized at room temperature
3.34 3.40 in a vacuum chamber (CryoVac, Vacuum Probe Station) to
prevent ambient effects, which can be evacuated to below
1.0103 Pa. A Keithley 4200-SCS semiconductor parameter
analyzerwas used to measure the TFT electrical properties.
During the electrical characterization under visible light illu-
mination, the luminance from a white halogen lamp on the
device surface was fixed at 180 lumen/m2.
3 Results and discussion
A cross section of the TFT is illustrated in Fig. 1(a). The
threshold voltage (Vth), subthreshold swing (S), and field-
effect mobility (FE) were extracted in compliance with the
gradual channel approximation [25]. The FE and Vth were
obtained from the transfer curves in the saturation region (drain
to source voltage, VDS =+10 V) using IDS =(CoxFE W/
2 L)(VGS-Vth)2, where W denotes the channel width, L the
channel length, VGS the gate to source voltage, IDS the drain to
source current, and Cox the capacitance of the SiOx(50 nm)/
DC
RF SiNx(350 nm) gate dielectric stack (Cox =12.5 nFcm2). The S

was taken as the minimum value of the inverse slope of the

20
log10(IDS) versus VGS characteristics. The transfer characteris-
15 tics are plotted in Fig. 1(b), where it is noted that the DC device
has larger on current and more positive threshold voltage than
10
the RF device. The transfer curve parameters are listed in
5
Table 1. The negative gate bias stress measurements were done
at room temperature with simultaneous exposure to visible
0
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 light. During the stress experiments, a VGS of 20 V and a
Sputter Time (sec.) VDS of +10 V were applied to each TFT device for a total
duration of 3 h. During the stress measurements, transfer curves
10
(b)
80 (VDS =+10 V) were collected every 30 min to extract the Vth as
OH Intensity (a. u.)

70 DC
60 RF a function of stress time. As shown in Fig. 1(c), when NBIS is
8 50
H Intensity (arb. units)

40
applied to the devices, the DC device undergoes a relatively
6
30
20
smaller shift in Vth than the RF device. Composition analysis
10
0
shows that the Hf:In:Zn cation ratio is 10:55:35 for both DC-
DC
4 RF
0 10 20 30 40
Sputter Time (sec.)
50 60 70 80
and RF-sputtered HIZO films. The high-resolution TEM im-
ages (Fig. 2) of the DC- and RF-grown HIZO films reveal that
2 they have a uniform and dense microstructure free of any
crystallinity. The diffuse FFT patterns (inset of Fig. 2) also
0
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80
confirm that the films are in an amorphous phase. Therefore
Sputter Time (sec.) the cation composition or microstructure are not the main
Fig. 3 SIMS depth profiles of (a) O2 and (b) H (inset: OH) in the DC- parameters that affect the device property and stability. In
and RF-grown HIZO films addition, it is found that there are no noticeable differences of
J Electroceram (2014) 32:220223
other material properties including the optical bandgap, refrac-
tive index, and density, between DC- and RF-grown HIZO
films (Table 2).
Because the oxygen content and hydrogen incorporation are
well known to affect the electrical properties of transparent
conducting oxides (TCOs) or oxide semiconductors [26],
SIMS experiments were carefully done to measure the relative
content of oxygen and hydrogen in the DC- and RF-grown
HIZO films. As shown in Fig. 3(a), the RF-sputtered HIZO
contains a slightly higher density of oxygen. However, the RF-
sputtered HIZO film contains about twice as many hydrogen
atoms as the DC film, detected in the form of H or OH ions [see
Fig. 3(b)]. Similar results were observed in a previous study
[27], where DC-sputtered indium tin oxide (ITO) films were
found to contain less oxygen than RF-sputtered ITO. The
slightly lower oxygen content of our DC-grown HIZO may
be the cause for the higher field-effect mobility, since oxygen
vacancies generally act as sources of free carriers [14].
The device stability under NBIS should be considered next.
One may expect that the oxygen vacancies in the DC device
act as carrier traps and make the Vth shift larger, but this is not
the case in this work. The RF device is less stable, and this
result may be explained in terms of hydrogen concentration. It
is very probable that the incorporated hydrogen atoms gener-
ated defect sites that act as hole traps [26], which accelerates
the Vth shift under NBIS. The exact mechanism that induces
such a large hydrogen concentration during RF sputtering has
not been clarified yet, thus future studies should involve the
observation of detailed hydrogen-related reaction during DC
and RF sputter processes.
4 Conclusion
In this work, the performance and stability of TFT devices
using DC- and RF-sputtered HIZO active layers were exam-
ined. The DC device had a higher field-effect mobility, and
high stability upon NBIS compared to the RF device. SIMS
experiments showed that the DC- sputtered HIZO film
contained a smaller concentration of oxygen, which may be
the reason for the high mobility, and the RF-sputtered HIZO
film contained more hydrogen, which are believed to induce
hole traps in the semiconductor and result in larger Vth shift
under NBIS.
Acknowledgement This work was supported by the National Research
Foundation of Korea (NRF) grant funded by the Korea government
(MEST) (No.2012011730) and also supported by the MSIP (Ministry
of Science, ICT&Future Planning), Korea, under the ITRC(Information
Technology Research Center)) support program NIPA-2013-(H0301-13-
1004) supervised by the NIPA(National IT Industry Promotion Agency).
223
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