Absence of enhanced stability in deuterated amorphous silicon thin film transistors

A comparison of the threshold voltage shift after gate-bias stress in hydrogenated and fully deuterated amorphous silicon thin film transistors (TFTs) is presented. A series of fully deuterated bottom gate TFTs consisting of a deuterated n(+) contact layer, deuterated intrinsic amorphous silicon (deposited at a range of pressures) and deuterated silicon nitride gate insulator have been produced. A similar series of fully hydrogenated bottom gate TFTs have also been produced, and the stability of the two sets of devices compared. Deuterated and hydrogenated amorphous silicon deposited under the same process conditions do not have the same material properties due to the difference in the ion energy of H and D in the plasma. However, deuterated and hydrogenated material deposited at the same growth rate have almost identical structural properties. Hydrogenated and deuterated TFTs are found to exhibit the same variation in stability as a function of growth rate. In particular, there is no evidence for increased stability in deuterated TFTs. Previous reports of more stable deuterated TFTs, by other groups, can be explained by a change in the Si network properties due to the higher ion energy of deuterium in comparison with hydrogen, when using similar deposition conditions. The implication of our experimental results is that, for the same amorphous network and hydrogen/deuterium concentration, the stability is identical for hydrogenated and deuterated TFTs. Therefore, there is no giant isotopic effect in amorphous silicon TFTs. The study also further supports the idea that Si-Si bond breaking is the rate-limiting step for Si dangling bond defect creation, rather than Si-H bond breaking.