Bendable Single Crystal Silicon Nanomembrane Thin Film Transistors with Improved Low-Temperature Processed Metal/n-Si Ohmic Contact by Inserting TiO2 Interlayer

Abstract

Bendable single crystal silicon nanomembrane thin film transistors (SiNMs TFTs), employing a simple method which can improve the metal/n-Silicon (Si) contact characteristics by inserting the titanium dioxide (TiO2) interlayer deposited by atomic layer deposition (ALD) at a low temperature (90 °C), are fabricated on ITO/PET flexible substrates. Current-voltage characteristics of titanium (Ti)/insertion layer (IL)/n-Si structures demonstrates that they are typically ohmic contacts. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) results determines that TiO2 is oxygen-vacancies rich, which may dope TiO2 and contribute to a lower resistance. By inserting TiO2 between Ti and n-Si, Ids of bendable single crystal SiNMs TFTs increases 3–10 times than those without the TiO2 insertion layer. The fabricated bendable devices show superior flexible properties. The TFTs, whose electrical properties keeps almost unchanged in 800 cycles bending with a bending radius of 0.75 cm, obtains the durability in bending test. All of the results confirm that it is a promising method to insert the TiO2 interlayer for improving the Metal/n-Si ohmic contact in fabrication of bendable single crystal SiNMs TFTs.