High mobility achieved in InGaZnO TFT with vacuum-gap as insulating layer

In this Letter, an amorphous In-Ga-Zn-O (InGaZnO) thin-film transistor (TFT) structure with a vacuum-gap as a dielectric layer is proposed and investigated. Field-effect conduction at the vacuum/InGaZnO interfaces exhibits extraordinary effective mobility (μ) up to 65 ± 20 cm2 V−1 s−1, while the μ is only around 10 cm2 V−1 s−1 at the SiO2/InGaZnO interfaces with similar film processing conditions. Temperature-dependent transport is performed for deeper insight of the physical origin of the much higher μ at the vacuum/InGaZnO interface. We have found the density of states (DOS) of tail states is notably lower for the transport near the vacuum (8 × 1017 compared to 1.1 × 1019 cm−3 eV−1 at the SiO2/vacuum interface). These indicate that traditional dielectric materials like SiO2 have strong effects on the charge transport degradation in InGaZnO TFTs by introducing extra energetic disorders, and the intrinsic charge transport in InGaZnO is potentially approaching those in poly-silicon TFTs. Exploring a high-quality dielectric layer should be one effective way to further optimize the electrical performance in TFTs based on amorphous oxide semiconductors.