A cost-effective fluorination method for enhancing the performance of metal oxide thin-film transistors

Authors：Deng, Sunbin; Dong, Shou-Cheng^*; Chen, Rongsheng^*; Zhong, Wei; Li, Guijun; Zhang, Meng; Yeung, Fion Sze Yan; Wong, Man; Kwok, Hoi-Sing

Source：Journal of the Society for Information Display, 2021, 29(5): 318-327.

DOI：10.1002/jsid.1013

• fluorination
• metal oxide
• planarization
• thin&#8208
• film transistor

Fluorination is a common technique for enhancing the performance of metal oxide (MO) thin-film transistors (TFTs). However, it usually requires extra processing steps under harsh conditions and brings about a high thermal budget. This work reports a mild fluorination method for MO TFTs using a fluorinated polyimide (F-PI) in an industry-standard planarization (PLN) process. During the thermal curing of the F-PI, fluorine-containing fragments diffused into MO channels and significantly improved the electrical performance of MO-TFTs. Channel fluorination was observed in both bottom- and top-gated devices, exemplifying the effectiveness of this method. A 2.2-in., monochrome AMOLED prototype display was fabricated using the fluorinated MO TFTs. This method provides a mild and low-thermal-budget fluorination technique and is useful for the cost-effective production of active-matrix flat-panel display panels.