Effects of Microwave and Furnace Annealing for P-Type SnO Thin Film Material in Oxygen Ambient

Transparent conductive oxide (TCO) semiconductors are attracted considerable attention due to a wide range of applications, such as flat panel display (FPD), touch panels, solar cells, and other optoelectronic devices. Owing to the different carrier conduction paths between n-type and P-type TCOs, the n-type TCO used in TFTs usually have high I_on/I_off current ratio (>10⁷) and high electron mobility (>10 cm²/V·s), P-type TCO TFTs are both lower than that of n-type one. For complementary circuits design and applications, however, both P-type and n-type semiconductor materials are equally important. For SnO thin films, it is important to adjust the ratio of Sn²⁺ (SnO P-type) and Sn⁴⁺ (SnO₂ n-type) in order to modulate the electrical characteristics. In this investigation of post treatment for SnO thin films, both microwave annealing (MWA) and furnace annealing process with 0₂ ambient are studied. The results show that SnO thin films are optimized at 300 °C, 30 minutes furnace annealing, the P-type SnO/SnO₂ thin film shows surface mean roughness 0.168 nm, [Sn²⁺]/[Sn⁴⁺] ratio as 0.838, at least 80% transmittance between 380 nm-700 nm visible light. Withthe results, SnO can be even used to fabricate high performance P-type thin film transistors (TFTs) device for future applications.