Nanocrystalline ZnON; High mobility and low band gap semiconductor material for high performance switch transistor and image sensor application

Interest in oxide semiconductors stems from benefits, primarily their ease of process, relatively high mobility (0.3-10 cm² /vs), and wide-bandgap. However, for practical future electronic devices, the channel mobility should be further increased over 50 cm² /vs and wide-bandgap is not suitable for photo/image sensor applications. The incorporation of nitrogen into ZnO semiconductor can be tailored to increase channel mobility, enhance the optical absorption for whole visible light and form uniform micro-structure, satisfying the desirable attributes essential for high performance transistor and visible light photo-sensors on large area platform. Here, we present electronic, optical and microstructural properties of ZnON, a composite of Zn₃N₂ and ZnO. Well-optimized ZnON material presents high mobility exceeding 100 cm² V^-1 s ^-1, the band-gap of 1.3 eV and nanocrystalline structure with multiphase. We found that mobility, microstructure, electronic structure, band-gap and trap properties of ZnON are varied with nitrogen concentration in ZnO. Accordingly, the performance of ZnON-based device can be adjustable to meet the requisite of both switch device and image-sensor potentials. These results demonstrate how device and material attributes of ZnON can be optimized for new device strategies in display technology and we expect the ZnON will be applicable to a wide range of imaging/display devices.