Rita Branquinho

Chemical solution deposition is a low cost, scalable and high performance technique to obtain metal oxide thin films. Recently, solution combustion synthesis has been introduced as a chemical route to reduce the processing temperature. This synthesis method takes advantage of the chemistry of the precursors as a source of energy for localized heating. According to the combustion chemistry some organic solvents can have a dual role in the reaction, acting both as solvent and fuel. In this work, we studied the role of 2-methoxyethanol in solution based synthesis of ZTO thin films and its influence on the performance of ZTO TFTs. The thermal behaviour of ZTO precursor solutions confirmed that 2-methoxyethanol acts simultaneously as a solvent and fuel, replacing the fuel function of urea. The electrical characterization of the solution based ZTO TFTs showed a slightly better performance and lower variability under positive gate bias stress when urea was not used as fuel, confirming that the excess fuel contributes negatively to the device operation and stability. Solution based ZTO TFTs demonstrated a low hysteresis ($Δ$V = −0.3 V) and a saturation mobility of 4–5 cm2 V−1 s−1.

Solution-processed field-effect transistors are strategic building blocks when considering low-cost sustainable flexible electronics. Nevertheless, some challenges (e.g., processing temperature, reliability, reproducibility in large areas, and cost effectiveness) are requirements that must be surpassed in order to achieve high-performance transistors. The present work reports electrolyte-gated transistors using as channel layer gallium–indium-zinc-oxide nanoparticles produced by solvothermal synthesis combined with a solid-state electrolyte based on aqueous dispersions of vinyl acetate stabilized with cellulose derivatives, acrylic acid ester in styrene and lithium perchlorate. The devices fabricated using this approach display a ION/IOFF up to 1 × 106, threshold voltage (VTh) of 0.3–1.9 V, and mobility up to 1 cm2/(V s), as a function of gallium–indium-zinc-oxide ink formulation and two different annealing temperatures. These results validates the usage of electrolyte-gated transistors as a viable and promising alternative for nanoparticle based semiconductor devices as the electrolyte improves the interface and promotes a more efficient step coverage of the channel layer, reducing the operating voltage when compared with conventional dielectrics gating. Moreover, it is shown that by controlling the applied gate potential, the operation mechanism of the electrolyte-gated transistors can be modified from electric double layer to electrochemical doping.

Despite the success of exploiting the properties of amorphous oxide semiconductors for device applications, the charge transport in these materials is still not clearly understood. The observation of a definite Hall voltage suggests that electron transport in the conduction band is free-electron-like. However, the temperature dependence of the Hall and field-effect mobilities cannot be explained using a simple bandlike model. Here, we perform gated Hall effect measurements in field-effect transistors, which allow us to make two independent estimates of the charge carrier concentration and determine the Hall factor providing information on the energy dependence of the relaxation time. We demonstrate that the Hall factor in a range of sputtered and solution-processed quaternary amorphous oxides, such as a-InGaZnO, is close to two, while in ternary oxides, such as InZnO, it is near unity. This suggests that quaternary elements like Ga act as strong ionized impurity scattering centers in these materials.