Room-temperature fabricated thin-film transistors based on compounds with lanthanum and main family element boron

• Main Authors: Xiao, Peng, Huang, Junhua, Dong, Ting, Xie, Jianing, Yuan, Jian, Luo, Dongxiang, Liu, Baiquan
• Other Authors: School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: 2018
• Subjects: LaBx; Thin Film Transistors
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/10356/84300; http://hdl.handle.net/10220/45110
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

For the first time, compounds with lanthanum from the main family element Boron (LaBx) were investigated as an active layer for thin-film transistors (TFTs). Detailed studies showed that the room-temperature fabricated LaBx thin film was in the crystalline state with a relatively narrow optical band gap of 2.28 eV. The atom ration of La/B was related to the working pressure during the sputtering process and the atom ration of La/B increased with the increase of the working pressure, which will result in the freer electrons in the LaBx thin film. LaBx-TFT without any intentionally annealing steps exhibited a saturation mobility of 0.44 cm2·V−1·s−1, which is a subthreshold swing (SS) of 0.26 V/decade and a Ion/Ioff ratio larger than 104. The room-temperature process is attractive for its compatibility with almost all kinds of flexible substrates and the LaBx semiconductor may be a new choice for the channel materials in TFTs.