We have developed a general and low-cost process to fabricate high mobility metal oxide semiconductors that is suitable for thin film electronics. This process uses simple metal halide precursors dissolved in an organic solvent and is capable of forming uniform and continuous thin films via digital fabrication (e.g. inkjet printing). This process has been demonstrated to deposit a variety of semiconducting metal oxides including binary oxides (ZnO, In2O3, SnO), ternary oxides (ZIO, ITO, ZTO) and quaternary compound IZTO. Functional thin film transistors with high field-effect mobility were fabricated successfully using channel layers deposited from this process (μFE ≅ 12 cm2/V-sec from inkjet printed IZTO channel layer). This novel synthetic pathway opens an avenue to form patterned metal oxide semiconductors through a simple and low-cost process for fabricating high performance inorganic thin film electronics via digital fabrication processes.
D.-H. Lee, Y.-J. Chang, G. S. Herman, C.-H. Chang, "A General and Low-Cost Route to Printable High-Mobility Inorganic Thin Film Transistors" in Proc. IS&T Digital Fabrication Conf., 2006, pp 27 - 30, https://doi.org/10.2352/ISSN.2169-4451.2006.22.2.art00011_3