Atmospheric-pressure plasma treatment toward high-quality solution-processed aluminum oxide gate dielectric films in thin-film transistors

Abstract We present an atmospheric-pressure plasma (APP) treatment technique to improve the electrical performance of solution-processed dielectric films. This technique can successfully reduce leakage current and frequency dependence of solution-processed dielectric films. The APP treatment contributes to the conversion of metal hydroxide to metal oxide, and in the case of a solution-treated AlO x dielectric thin film, it effectively ascribes to the formation of high-quality AlO x dielectric thin films. The capacitance of the untreated AlO x dielectric thin film varies up to 9.9% with frequency change, but the capacitance of the APP treated AlO x dielectric thin film varies within 1.5%. When the solution-processed InO x thin-film transistors (TFTs) were fabricated using these dielectric films, the field-effect mobility of TFTs with the APP-treated AlO x dielectric film was increased sig…