Influence of Electron Beam Irradiation on the Electrical Properties of Zn-Sn-O Thin Film Transistor

The effect of electron beam (EB) irradiation on the electrical properties of Zn-Sn-O (ZTO) thin films fabricated using a sol-gel process was investigated. As the EB dose increased, the saturation mobility of ZTO thin film transistors (TFTs) was found to slightly decrease, and the subthreshold swing and on/off ratio degenerated. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy analysis of the O 1s core level showed that the relative area of oxygen vacancies (VO) increased from 10.35 to 12.56 % as the EB dose increased from 0 to 7.5 × 1016 electrons/cm2. Also, spectroscopic ellipsometry analysis showed that the optical band gap varied from 3.53 to 3.96 eV with increasing EB dose. From the results of the electrical property and XPS analyses of the ZTO TFTs, it was found that the electrical characteristic of the ZTO thin films changed from semiconductor to conductor with increasing EB dose. It is thought that the electrical property change is due to the formation of defect sites like oxygen vacancies.