Tunable electrical properties of NiO thin films and p-type thin-film transistors

Abstract Oxide p-type transistors are expected in realization of complementary circuits. Here, amorphous p-type NiO thin films were deposited on glass substrates by radio frequency (rf) sputtering at various growth temperatures and O 2 /Ar flow ratios. The influence of growth temperature and O 2 /Ar flow ratio on the structural and electrical properties of amorphous NiO thin films has been systematically investigated by means of characterizations from X-ray diffraction, UV–vis spectroscopy, and electrical measurements. Pure Ar ambient with room temperature (RT) growth of NiO films shows the highest mobility of 1.07 cm 2 /Vs, and hole concentration of 2.78 × 10 17  cm − 3 . Initial p-type NiO-based thin film transistors grown by magnetron sputtering demonstrated a mobility of 0.05 cm 2 /Vs, a threshold voltage (Vth) of − 8.6 V, subthreshold swing (S) of 2.6 V/dec, the current on–off ratio of 10 3 , respectively.