Hybrid Gate Dielectric of MoS2 Transistors for Enhanced Photo-Electronic Stability

MoS2 thin-film transistors (TFTs) have been widely studied for use as driving TFTs of active-matrix displays considering their outstanding electrical advantages such as high mobility and high on/off current ratio. However, due to the atomically thin nature of MoS2, the device performance of MoS2 TFTs suffers from trap sites at the interface. In this study, a hybrid gate dielectric based on an interface engineering strategy using poly(1,3,5-trivinyl-1,3,5-trimethyl cyclotrisiloxane) (pV3D3) via initiated chemical vapor deposition is investigated to enhance the negative bias illumination stress (NBIS) stability of MoS2 TFTs. Compared to a single oxide dielectric layer (Al2O3), a hybrid dielectric layer (pV3D3/Al2O3) exhibits decreased threshold voltage shift under NBIS by reducing functional groups, such as hydroxyl (OH-) group, which act as charge trapping sites at the interface between the MoS2 channel and the gate dielectric. It is confirmed by quantitative analysis using the stretched-exponential model. Tau (tau), one of the modeling parameters in the stretched-exponential model, decreases from 210 to 120 s, indicating the improvement in stability. Furthermore, in a low-frequency noise (1/f) measurement, hybrid-dielectric-based TFTs show an order of magnitude lower noise power spectral density (S-ID/I-D(2)) than single-oxide-dielectric-based TFTs.