Investigation and active suppression of self-heating induced degradation in amorphous InGaZnO thin film transistors

Self-heating effect in amorphous InGaZnO thin-film transistors remains a critical issue that degrades device performance and stability, hindering their wider applications. In this work, pulsed current–voltage analysis has been applied to explore the physics origin of self-heating induced degradation, where Joule heat is shortly accumulated by drain current and dissipated in repeated time cycles as a function of gate bias. Enhanced positive threshold voltage shift is observed at reduced heat dissipation time, higher drain current, and increased gate width. A physical picture of Joule heating assisted charge trapping process has been proposed and then verified with pulsed negative gate bias stressing scheme, which could evidently counteract the self-heating effect through the electric-field assisted detrapping process. As a result, this pulsed gate bias scheme with negative quiescent voltage could be used as a possible way to actively suppress self-heating related device degradation.