In-Poor IGZO: Superior Resilience to Hydrogen in Forming Gas Anneal and PBTI

2024/12/10 by A. Kruv, Anastasiia Kruv, M. J. van Setten +27 · 1 voice · 1 citation
Engineering · Materials Science · Physics and Astronomy · #Advanced Battery Technologies Research #Advancements in Solid Oxide Fuel Cells #Gas Sensing Nanomaterials and Sensors #cond-mat.mtrl-sci #physics.comp-ph

paper · pdf · doi:10.1021/acsaelm.5c00383

arxiv published 2024/12/10 · openalex publication_date 2025/04/28 · arxiv updated 2025/05/08 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/29

Abstract

Integrating In–Ga–Zn oxide (IGZO) channel transistors into silicon-based ecosystems requires the resilience of the channel material to hydrogen. Standard In-rich IGZO (In = 40 metal at. %) suffers from degradation under forming gas anneal (FGA) and hydrogen-driven positive bias temperature instability (PBTI). In this paper, we demonstrate scaled, top-gated transistors with an atomic layer deposition (ALD)-deposited In-poor (In ≤ 17 metal atom %) IGZO channel that shows superior resilience to hydrogen compared to those with an In-rich IGZO channel. These devices, fabricated with a 300 mm semiconductor fabrication plant (FAB) process, with dimensions down to W CH × L TG = 80 × 40 nm 2, show excellent stability during a 2 h, 420 °C forming gas anneal (0.06 ≤ |Δ V TH | ≤ 0.33 V) and improved resilience to H in PBTI at 125 °C (down to no detectable H-induced V TH shift) compared to In-rich devices. We demonstrate that the mechanism of device degradation by H in the FGA is different from that of the H-induced V TH instability in PBTI. We argue that the first is due to oxygen scavenging by H, and the second, H release from the gate dielectric into the channel. We also show that resilience to H in one process does not automatically translate to resilience to H in the other. This significant improvement in IGZO resilience to H enables the use of FGA treatments during fabrication, needed for silicon technology compatibility, as well as further scaling and 3D integration, bringing IGZO-based technologies closer to mass production.

Citations

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• A family of variable-metric methods derived by variational means
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• The Paradigm Shift in Understanding the Bias Temperature Instability: From Reaction–Diffusion to Switching Oxide Traps
• CP2K: An electronic structure and molecular dynamics software package - Quickstep: Efficient and accurate electronic structure calculations

Cited by

• Impact of Mechanical Stress on IGZO TFTs: Enhancing PBTI Degradation

Discussions

• In transistor research, one big challenge is breaking the performance (on / off ratio, switching speed) / reliability (stability over many operation cycles) trade off. Here's our latest contribution t [bsky, 3 points, 0 comments]

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