Photonic Curing of Solution-Processed Oxide Semiconductors with Efficient Gate Absorbers and Minimal Substrate...

In this study, photonic curing is used to rapidly and effectively convert metal-oxide sol-gels to realize high-quality thin-film transistors (TFTs). Photonic curing offers advantages over conventional thermal processing methods such as ultrashort processing time and compatibility with low-temperature substrates. However, previous work on photonically cured TFTs often results in significant heating of the entire substrate rather than just the thin film at the surface. Here, sol-gel indium zinc oxide (IZO)-based TFTs are photonically cured with efficient gate absorbers requiring as few as five pulses using intense white light delivering radiant energy up to 6 J cm^-2. Simulations indicate that the IZO film reaches a peak temperature of ∼590 °C while the back of the substrate stays below 30 °C. The requirements and design guidelines for photonic curing metal-oxide semiconductors for high-performance TFT applications are discussed, focusing on the importance of effective gate absorbers and optimized pulse designs to efficiently and effectively cure sol-gel films. This process yields TFTs with a field-effect mobility of 21.8 cm² V^-1 s^-1 and an I _on/I _off ratio approaching 10⁸, which exceeds the performance of samples annealed at 500 °C for 1 h. This is the best performance and highest metal-oxide conversion for photonically cured oxide TFTs achieved to date that does not significantly heat the entire thickness of the substrate. Importantly, the conversion from sol-gel precursors to the semiconducting metal-oxide phase during photonic curing is on par with thermal annealing, which is a significant improvement over previous pulsed-light processing work. The use of efficient gate absorbers also allows for the reduction in the number of pulses and efficient sol-gel conversion.