Rare-Earth Doped Wide Bandgap Oxide Semiconductor Materials and Devices

Amorphous oxide semiconductors composed of indium gallium zinc oxide are transparent to visible light and have higher electron mobilities than conventional amorphous semiconductors, such as amorphous silicon. The advantages of higher switching speed, lack of dangling bonds leading to good electronic stability and visible spectrum transparency of amorphous oxide semiconductor devices are expected to lead to numerous applications, including transparent displays and flexible electronics.;In this thesis the integration of transparent thin film transistors with transparent electroluminescent pixels was investigated. Compared with display technologies employing organic semiconductors that degrade with exposure to moisture and ultraviolet light, the all-oxide structure of this device is expected to be environmentally robust. This is believed to be the first demonstration of an integrated active matrix pixel using amorphous oxide semiconductor materials as both the light emitter and addressing circuit elements.;The transparent active matrix pixel was designed, fabricated and characterized, that integrated amorphous indium gallium zinc oxide (IGZO) thin film transistors (TFTs) with a europium-doped IGZO thin film electroluminescent (TFEL) device. The integrated circuits were fabricated using room temperature pulsed laser deposition (PLD) of IGZO and ITO thin films onto substrates of Corning 7059 glass, sputter coated with an ITO back contact and subsequent atomic layer deposited ATO high-k dielectric. A second ITO layer is deposited by PLD as a contact and interconnect layer. All deposition steps were carried out at room temperature.;In addition to the integration task, an important part of this thesis concerns the investigation of europium as a dopant in different oxide hosts including gallium oxide, gadolinium oxide, and amorphous IGZO. Amorphous IGZO was chosen for the integration task since it could be deposited at room temperature, however it was found that the emission intensity of Eu:IGZO thin films was strongly dependent on the oxygen pressure during deposition. It was determined that Eu3+ emission only occurs when the films are insulating, the result of increased oxygen pressure during deposition. Relatively low concentrations of Eu3+ of 1 mole percent were used for this study, with the intensity of these first generation pixels at 6 cd/m 2.;Both gadolinium and gallium oxide films were investigated at higher substrate temperatures with a range of europium dopant concentrations. It was found that the both cubic and monoclinic phases of gadolinium oxide could be deposited, with the phase determined by deposition oxygen pressure. The film structure was analyzed by x-ray diffraction and transmission electron microscopy and optical spectra were obtained using time resolved photoluminescence (performed by a collaborator). These results were found to be in agreement with Stark-split energy levels calculated by another collaborator.;Using 2.5 mole percent europium-doped gallium oxide as a host, bright thin film electroluminescent devices with intensities of 221 cd/m2 observed for a TFEL device excited by a symmetric +/-100 V max square pulse train at 1 kHz. This compares favorably with other red TFEL devices in the literature. Comparison with cathodoluminescence and photoluminescence data suggests that these performance metrics can be improved since the optimal concentration of europium by those experimental techniques was found to be near 10 mole percent. Time resolved photoluminescence revealed that radiative relaxation of the Eu3+ dopant could be modeled by two exponential decay components. Comparison of the intensity versus frequency of the electroluminescent data with time resolved photoluminescence data suggests that the faster component dominates the emission of the TFEL device.