Shih-Ching Chen

Influence of electrode material on the resistive memory switching property of indium gallium zinc oxide thin films

The InGaZnO taken as switching layer in resistive nonvolatile memory is proposed in this paper. The memory cells composed of Ti/InGaZnO/TiN reveal the bipolar switching behavior that keeps stable resistance ratio of 102 with switching responses over 100 cycles. The resistance switching is ascribed to the formation/disruption of conducting filaments upon electrochemical reaction near/at the bias-applied electrode. The influence of electrode material on resistance switching is investigated through Pt/InGaZnO/TiN devices, which perform the unipolar and bipolar behavior as applying bias on Pt and TiN electrode, respectively. Experimental results demonstrate that the switching behavior is selective by the electrode.

Influence of positive bias stress on N2O plasma improved InGaZnO thin film transistor

A post-treatment using N2O-plasma is applied to enhance the electrical characteristics of amorphous indium gallium zinc oxide thin film transistors. Improvements in the field-effect mobility and the subthreshold swing demonstrate that interface states were passivated after N2O-plasma treatment, and a better stability under positive gate-bias stress was obtained in addition. The degradation of mobility, resulted from bias stress, reduces from 6.1% (untreated devices) to 2.6% (N2O-plasma treated devices). Nevertheless, a strange hump characteristic occurs in transfer curve during bias stress, inferring that a parasitic transistor had been caused by the gate-induced electrical field.

Behaviors of InGaZnO thin film transistor under illuminated positive gate-bias stress

In this letter, we investigate the impact of the light illumination on the stability of indium–gallium– zinc oxide thin film transistors under positive gate-bias stress. The noticeable decrease in threshold voltage Vt shift more than 5.5 V under illuminated positive gate-bias stress indicates a superior reliability in contrast with the dark stress. The accelerated Vt recovery characteristic compared with dark recovery demonstrates that the charge detrapping effect was enhanced under illumination. Furthermore, the average effective energy barrier of charge trapping and detrapping was derived to verify that illumination can excite the trapped charges and accelerate the charge detrapping process.

Bias-induced oxygen adsorption in zinc tin oxide thin film transistors under dynamic stress

This study investigates the effects of bias-induced oxygen adsorption on the electrical characteristic instability of zinc tin oxide thin film transistors in different ambient oxygen partial pressures. When oxygen pressure is largest, the threshold voltages showed the quickest increase but the slowest recovery during the stress phase and recovery phase, respectively. This finding corresponds to the charge trapping time constant and recovery time constant, which are extracted by fitting the stretched-exponential equation and which exhibit a relationship with oxygen pressure. We suggest that the gate bias reduces the activation energy of oxygen adsorption during gate bias stress.

Light-induced instability of an InGaZnO thin film transistor with and without SiOx passivation layer formed by plasma-enhanced-chemical-vapor-deposition

This paper investigates the illuminated behaviors of InGaZnO thin film transistors with and without a SiOx passivation. For the passivated device, more interface states were generated during SiOx passivation layer deposition by plasma-enhanced-chemical-vapor-deposition. The enhanced trap-assisted photoexcited hole generation induces source side barrier lowering and causes an apparent subthreshold stretch-out phenomenon. However, for the unpassivated device, the fact that the threshold voltage shift in ambient oxygen is lower than in vacuum under light illumination suggests oxygen desorption and readsorption occurs simultaneously, which is consistent with the accelerated recovery rate in oxygen ambiance.

Bipolar Resistive Switching Characteristics of Transparent Indium Gallium Zinc Oxide Resistive Random Access Memory

This study investigates a sputtered InGaZnO (IGZO) thin film to apply into a resistive random access memory device. After the formation of an indium tin oxide (ITO)/IGZO/ITO structure at room temperature, the device exhibits a repeatable bipolar resistance switching behavior without an electroforming process and an excellent transmittance in the visible region. The conduction mechanisms for low and high resistance states are dominated by Ohms law and space-charge-limited current behavior, respectively. In retention and endurance tests, a resistance ratio of more than 1 order remains after 10 4 s at 90°C and after 100 dc voltage sweeping cycles.

Environment-dependent thermal instability of sol-gel derived amorphous indium- gallium-zinc-oxide thin film transistors

The environment-dependent electrical performances as a function of temperature for sol-gel derived amorphous indium-gallium-zinc-oxide (a-IGZO) thin film transistors are investigated in this letter. In the ambients without oxygen, thermal activation dominates and enhances device performance. In oxygen-containing environments, mobility and drain current degrades and the threshold slightly increase as temperature increases. We develop a porous model for a-IGZO film relating to the drain current and mobility lowering due to film porosity and oxygen adsorption/penetration. It also relates to the threshold voltage recovery at high temperature owing to the varying form of adsorbed oxygen and the combination of oxygen and vacancies.

A low-temperature method for improving the performance of sputter-deposited ZnO thin-film transistors with supercritical fluid

A low-temperature method, supercritical CO2 (SCCO2) fluid technology, is employed to improve the device properties of ZnO TFT at 150 °C. In this work, the undoped ZnO films were deposited by sputter at room temperature and treated by SCCO2 fluid which is mixed with 5 ml pure H2O. After SCCO2 treatment, the on/off current ratios and threshold voltage of the device were improved significantly. From x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy analyses, the enhancements were attributed to the stronger Zn–O bonds, the hydrogen-related donors, and the reduction in dangling bonds at the grain boundary by OH passivation.

A Novel Nanowire Channel Poly-Si TFT Functioning as Transistor and Nonvolatile SONOS Memory

In this letter, a polycrystalline silicon thin-film transistor consisting of silicon-oxide-nitride-oxide-silicon (SONOS) stack gate dielectric and nanowire (NW) channels was investigated for the applications of transistor and nonvolatile memory. The proposed device, which is named as NW SONOS-TFT, has superior electrical characteristics of transistor, including a higher drain current, a smaller threshold voltage (Vth) , and a steeper subthreshold slope. Moreover, the NW SONOS-TFT also can exhibit high program/erase efficiency under adequate bias operation. The duality of both transistor and memory device for the NW SONOS-TFT can be attributed to the trigate structure and channel corner effect.

Effects of Ambient Atmosphere on Electrical Characteristics of Al2O3 Passivated InGaZnO Thin Film Transistors during Positive-Bias-Temperature-Stress Operation

This study investigates the effects of ambient atmosphere on electrical characteristics of Al2O3 passivated InGaZnO thin film transistors during positive bias temperature stress. Under H2O vapor environment, the Al2O3 passivated device exhibited stable electrical behaviors (ΔV th < 0.5 V), while the unpassivated device showed an apparent hump effect in the transfer curves under bias stress. The hump phenomenon was attributed to the absorption of the H2O molecule which can serve as a donor to develop a conductive back channel. The experiment results suggest that Al2O3 is an effective passivation layer to suppress water vapor absorption in the InGaZnO back channel.