Amorphous ZnO films grown by room temperature pulsed laser deposition on paper and mylar for transparent electronics applications

Recently, there has been a surge of activity in the development of next-generation transparent thin film transistors for use in applications such as electronic paper and flexible organic light emitting diode panels. Amongst the transparent conducting oxides attracting the most interest at present are Amorphous Oxide Semiconductors (AOS) based on ZnO because they exhibit enhanced electron mobility (μ), superior capacity for processability in air and improved thermodynamic stability compared with conventional covalent amorphous semiconductors and existing AOS. Moreover, they give excellent performance when fabricated at relatively low temperature and can readily be made in large area format. Thus, they are projected to resolve the trade-off between processing temperature and device performance and thereby allow fabrication on inexpensive heatsensitive substrates. For the moment, however, an undesireable post-deposition annealing step at a temperature of about 200°C is necessary in order to obtain suitable electrical and optical properties. This paper demonstrates the possibility of directly engineering amorphous ZnO with relatively high conductiviy at room temperature on paper and mylar substrates using pulsed laser deposition.