Focused Review on Print-Patterned Contact Electrodes for Metal-Oxide Thin-Film Transistors

Fei Liu*, Liam Gillan, Jaakko Leppäniemi, Ari Alastalo

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalReview Articlepeer-review

11 Citations (Scopus)
143 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

Metal-oxide-semiconductor-based thin-film transistors (TFTs) are exploited in display backplanes and X-ray detectors fabricated by vacuum deposition and lithographic patterning. However, there is growing interest to use scalable printing technologies to lower the environmental impact and cost of processing. There have been substantial research efforts on oxide dielectric and semiconductor materials and their interfaces. Materials for the source/drain (S/D) contact electrodes and their interface to the semiconductor have received less attention, particularly concerning the usage of printing processes. Specific contact resistivity of oxide TFTs with print-patterned S/D contacts can be 10−2 to 101 Ω cm2, significantly higher than vacuum-deposited contacts around 10−5 to 10−3 Ω cm2. Problems at the semiconductor/S/D interface, such as large contact resistance, poor adhesion, or cross-interface contact material migration, affect device characteristics causing hysteresis loops, kink or step-like distortion, and threshold voltage shift. This work reviews advances in materials and fabrication methods of print-patterned S/D electrodes for oxide TFTs. Differences in characterization methods among existing literature hamper comparing the performance of print-patterned S/D contacts. Therefore, systematic and standardized measurements are proposed to assist identification of possible problems, which to some degree can then be mitigated by device fabrication strategies, facilitating well-performing printed contact electrodes for metal-oxide TFTs.
Original languageEnglish
Article number2202258
JournalAdvanced Materials Interfaces
Volume10
Issue number7
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 6 Mar 2023
MoE publication typeA2 Review article in a scientific journal

Funding

This work was funded in part by the Academy of Finland project FLEXRAD (Grant Agreement number 328627), by the European Union's Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation program HI-ACCURACY project (Grant Agreement number 862410), and by the European Union's Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation program SYNERGY project (Grant Agreement number 952169).

Keywords

  • metal-oxide semiconductors
  • printed electronics
  • printed transistors
  • source/drain contacts
  • thin-film transistors

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