Numerical study on the dependence of ZnO thin-film transistor characteristics on grain boundary position

The dependence of transistor characteristics on grain boundary (GB) position in short-channel ZnO thin film transistors (TFTs) has been investigated using two-dimensional numerical simulations. To simulate the device accurately, both tail states and deep-level states are taken into consideration. It is shown that both the transfer and output characteristics of ZnO TFTs change dramatically with varying GB position, which is different from polycrystalline Si (poly-Si) TFTs. By analysing the mechanism of the carrier transportation in the device, it is revealed that the dependence is derived from the degrees of carrier concentration descent and mobility variation with GB position.