Molecular Engineering of Coordination Ligand for Multifunctional Sol–Gel Oxides

Abstract Here a ligand exchange strategy for synthesizing sol–gel oxides is demonstrated to achieve multifunctionality including direct photolithography, high dielectric strength, and high charge carrier mobility, which is challenging to obtain in such oxides. For this purpose, a series of bidentate ligands with azide termini and ethylene‐glycol bridges is synthesized, and these ligands are universally applicable to the synthesis of a variety of dielectric and semiconductor oxides. Optimized photolithography conditions yield a high‐quality ZrO 2 dielectric film with a high dielectric constant and strength of ≈18 and ≈7 MV cm −1 , respectively. Additionally, this strategy is applied to semiconductor oxides such as In 2 O 3 and ZnO, and the all‐oxide‐patterned solution‐processed thin‐film transistor (TFT) demonstrates a high charge carrier mobility of ≈40 cm 2 V −1 s −1 . An oxide TFT array is fully photopatterned on a 4‐inch Si wafer; uniform performances are observed across these devices. This study suggests the possibility of realizing multifunctional oxides for application in advanced electronics using simple ligand exchange chemistry.