Jeong Joo Hyun, Lee Won Woo, Kwon Sang Jik, Park Min-Kyu, Cho Eou-Sik
Department of Semiconductor Engineering, Gachon University, Seongnam City 13120, Republic of Korea.
Department of Electronic Engineering, Gachon University, Seongnam City 13120, Republic of Korea.
Nanomaterials (Basel). 2025 Aug 14;15(16):1247. doi: 10.3390/nano15161247.
Amorphous indium gallium zinc oxide (a-IGZO) is widely used as an oxide semiconductor in the electronics industry due to its low leakage current and high field-effect mobility. However, a-IGZO suffers from notable limitations, including crystallization at temperatures above 600 °C and the high cost of indium. To address these issues, nitrogen-doped zinc oxynitride (ZnON), which can be processed at room temperature, has been proposed. Nitrogen in ZnON effectively reduces oxygen vacancies (V), resulting in enhanced field-effect mobility and improved stability under positive bias stress (PBS) compared to IGZO. In this study, selective deep ultraviolet femtosecond (DUV fs) laser annealing was applied to the channel region of ZnON thin-film transistors (TFTs), enabling rapid threshold voltage (Vth) modulation within microseconds, without the need for vacuum processing. Based on the electrical characteristics of both Vth-modulated and pristine ZnON TFTs, an NMOS inverter was fabricated, demonstrating reliable performance. These results suggest that laser annealing is a promising technique, applicable to various logic circuits and electronic devices.
非晶铟镓锌氧化物（a-IGZO）因其低漏电流和高场效应迁移率而在电子工业中被广泛用作氧化物半导体。然而，a-IGZO存在明显的局限性，包括在600℃以上的温度下结晶以及铟的成本高昂。为了解决这些问题，有人提出了可以在室温下进行处理的氮掺杂氮氧化锌（ZnON）。与IGZO相比，ZnON中的氮有效地减少了氧空位（V），从而提高了场效应迁移率，并在正偏压应力（PBS）下具有更好的稳定性。在本研究中，将选择性深紫外飞秒（DUV fs）激光退火应用于ZnON薄膜晶体管（TFT）的沟道区域，能够在微秒内实现快速阈值电压（Vth）调制，而无需真空处理。基于Vth调制的和原始的ZnON TFT的电学特性，制造了一个NMOS反相器，展示了可靠的性能。这些结果表明，激光退火是一种很有前途的技术，适用于各种逻辑电路和电子设备。
