Transparent oxide semiconductor and its solution processes for thin film transistor
Zhou T., Chen Z., Cui Z.
Transparent oxide is one of the most important transparent electronic materials. The nature of transparent oxide materials is a type of semiconductor with wide band gap and high charge mobility. Their charge carrier concentrations can be adjusted in wide range by controlling the composition and structure of oxide, making them as either semiconductors or conductors. Transparent conductive oxides in particular have been extensively studied for many years and been widely applied in commercial products. The low temperature processed transparent oxide semiconductor (TOS) appeared in high performance thin film transistors ten years ago, since then TOSs have gained extensive attention as the new generation semiconductor. Owing to considerable advances in the last few years, thin film transistors based on transparent oxide semiconductors are approaching the commercial market. Particularly, the solution processed transparent oxide is among the most promising printable semiconductor materials due to its good electronic performance, low processed temperature and high stability in ambient atmosphere. In this paper, transparent conducting oxide including three basic oxide compounds was briefly reviewed. Then, the development history of transparent oxide semiconductor was introduced. Emphasis was placed on the latest research on solution-processed TOSs for printable thin-film transistors (TFT), which have demonstrated mobility up to 10 cm2V-1s-1 and on/off ratio more than 106 even when processed temperature as low as 200°C.