Influence of Reduction in Effective Channel Length on Device Operations of In-Ga-Zn-O Thin-Film Transistors With Variations in Channel Compositions

Device scaling of oxide-channel thin-film transistors (TFTs) toward sub-micrometer regime has been an urgent issue to realize higher-resolution displays and 3-D structured electronic devices. The channel-shortening effect is a serious problem in implementing the oxide TFTs with short channel lengths. In this work, the short-channel effects (SCEs) of the In-Ga-Zn-O (IGZO) TFTs were investigated with the variations in channel composition when the channel length was varied from 3 μm to 500 nm. Effective channel lengths were examined to decrease with increasing the In contents, in which the reduction of the effective channel length was estimated to be 240 and 720 nm when the In/Ga ratio increased 0.7 to 1.4. The drain bias-dependent roll-offs in turn-on voltages, which typically correspond to drain-induced barrier-lowering (DIBL), also showed significant channel composition dependence. When the In/Ga ratio within the channel increased from 0.2 to 1.4, the DIBL coefficients were estimated from 22 to 244 mV/V for the devices with a channel length of 1 μm. The channel composition-dependent variations in the effective channel length were suggested to result from the inter-diffusion and redox reactions at interfaces between the channel and electrode layers. Alternatively, the contact resistances were also examined to play major roles in determining the SCEs with scaling the devices, especially when the In contents decreased in the channel composition. Thus, properly controlling the channel composition can be concluded as such an important issue for compromising both technical strategies to reduce the channel resistance and to suppress the reduction of effective channel length.