Ion polarization behavior in alumina under pulsed gate bias stress

Alkali metal ion incorporation in alumina significantly increases alumina capacitance by ion polarization. With high capacitance, ion-incorporated aluminas become promising high dielectric constant (high-k) gate dielectric materials in field-effect transistors (FETs) to enable reduced operating voltage, using oxide or organic semiconductors. Alumina capacitance can be manipulated by incorporation of alkali metal ions, including potassium (K⁺), sodium (Na⁺), and lithium (Li⁺), having different bond strengths with oxygen. To investigate the electrical stability of zinc tin oxide-based transistors using ion incorporated alumina as gate dielectrics, pulsed biases at different duty cycles (20%, 10%, and 2% representing 5 ms, 10 ms, and 50 ms periods, respectively) were applied to the gate electrode, sweeping the gate voltage over series of these cycles. We observed a particular bias stress-induced decrease of saturation field-effect mobility accompanied by threshold voltage shifts (ΔV_th) in potassium and sodium-incorporated alumina (abbreviated as PA and SA)-based FETs at high duty cycle that persisted over multiple gate voltage sweeps, suggesting a possible creation of new defects in the semiconductor. This conclusion is also supported by the greater change in the mobility-capacitance (μC) product than in capacitance itself. Moreover, a more pronounced ΔV_th over shorter times was observed in lithium-incorporated alumina (abbreviated as LA)-based transistors, suggesting trapping of electrons in existing interfacial states. ΔV_th from multiple gate voltage sweeps over time were fit to stretched exponential forms. All three dielectrics show good stability using 50-ms intervals (20-Hz frequencies), corresponding to 2% duty cycles