Thermal Dehydrogenation Impact on Positive Bias Stability of Amorphous InSnZnO Thin-Film Transistors

Recently, the growing demand for amorphous oxide semiconductor thin-film transistors (AOS TFTs) with high mobility and good stability to implement ultrahigh-resolution displays has made tracking the role of hydrogen in oxide semiconductor films increasingly important. Hydrogen is an essential element that contributes significantly to the field effect mobility and bias stability characteristics of AOS TFTs. However, because hydrogen is the lightest atom and has high reactivity to metal and oxide materials, elucidating its impact on AOS thin films has been challenging. Therefore, in this study, we propose controlling the hydrogen quantities in amorphous InSnZnO (a-ITZO) thin films through thermal dehydrogenation to precisely reveal the hydrogen influences on the electrical characteristics of a-ITZO TFTs. The as-deposited device containing 15.69 × 10¹⁵ atoms/cm² of hydrogen exhibited a relatively low saturation mobility of 18.1 cm²/V·s and poor positive bias stress stability. However, depending on the extent of thermal dehydrogenation, not only did the hydrogen quantity and interface defect density (D_IT) decrease but also the conductivity and surface energy increased due to the rise in oxygen vacancies and hydroxyl groups in a-ITZO thin films. As a result, the a-ITZO TFT with a hydrogen amount of 4.828 × 10¹⁵ atoms/cm² showed that the saturation mobility improved up to 36.8 cm²/V·s, and positive bias stress stability was remarkably enhanced. Hence, we report the ability to manage the hydrogen quantity with thermal dehydrogenation and demonstrate that high-performance a-ITZO TFTs can be realized when an appropriate hydrogen concentration is achieved.