Electrical Instability of RF Sputter Amorphous In-Ga-Zn-O Thin-Film Transistors

Bias-temperature-stress (BTS) induced electrical instability of the RF sputter amorphous In-Ga-Zn-O (a-IGZO) thin-film transistors (TFTs) was investigated. Both positive and negative BTS were applied and found to primarily cause a positive and negative voltage shift in transfer (
I

_DS
-
V

_GS
) characteristics, respectively. The time evolution of bulk-state density (
N

_BS
) and characteristic temperature of the conduction-band-tail-states (
TG
) are extracted. Since both values showed only minor changes after BTS, the results imply that observed shift in TFT
I

_DS
-
V

_GS
curves were primarily due to channel charge injection/trapping rather than defect states creation. We also demonstrated the validity of using stretch-exponential equation to model both positive and negative BTS induced threshold voltage shift (Delta
V

_th
) of the a-IGZO TFTs. Stress voltage and temperature dependence of Delta
V

_th
evolution are described.