Effective contact resistance of zinc-tin oxide-based thin film transistors

We investigated different source/drain (S/D) electrode materials in thin-film transistors (TFTs) based on amorphous zinc-tin oxide (ZTO) semiconductors. The transfer length, channel conductance, and effective contact resistance between the S/D electrodes and the a-ZTO channel layer were examined. Total ON resistance (R(T)), transfer length (L(T)) and effective contact resistance (R(c-eff)) were extracted by the well-known transmission-line method (TLM) using a series of TFTs with different channel lengths. When the width of ZTO channel layer was fixed as 50 μm, the lengths were varying from 10 to 50 μm. The channel layer and S/D electrode were defined by lift-off process and for the S/D electrodes, indium-tin oxide (ITO), Cu, and Mo were used. The resistivity and work function values of electrode materials were considered when selected as candidates for S/D electrodes of ZTO-TFTs. The results showed that the ZTO-TFTs with Mo S/D electrodes had the lowest effective contact resistance indicating that ZTO-TFTs with Mo electrodes have better electrical performance compared to others.