High-Mobility Indium Native Oxide Transistors via Liquid-Metal Printing in Air

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates high-mobility indium native oxide transistors fabricated via ambient-air liquid-metal printing, offering a low-cost alternative to vacuum techniques for next-generation oxide electronics.

Contribution

It introduces a low-temperature, ambient-air liquid-metal printing method to create high-mobility InOx transistors with excellent electrical performance and compatibility with existing dielectric materials.

Findings

InOx FETs achieve a conductivity mobility of 125 cm²/V·s.

InOx FETs with HfO₂ exhibit a field-effect mobility of 107 cm²/V·s.

The devices show high on/off ratios (>10⁷) and stable operation over 10⁴ cycles.

Abstract

Oxide semiconductors have emerged as common channel materials in transistors and hold promise for next-generation electronics, yet achieving high mobility typically requires costly vacuum-based techniques. Here, ultrathin (5-nm) indium native oxide (InOx) prepared by ambient-air liquid-metal printing (LMP) at low temperature (250 {\deg}C), is applied as semiconducting channel in field-effect transistor (FET). The resulting InOx is found to be polycrystalline with large lateral grains that extend vertically throughout the film thickness. InOx FETs in a transfer length method (TLM) configuration demonstrate a high conductivity mobility (uCON) of 125 cm2 V-1 s-1, with systematic analysis of contact resistance confirming potential for channel length scaling. Integration with atomic-layer-deposited (ALD) gate dielectrics further reveals excellent compatibility, for instance, InOx FET integrated with HfO2 exhibits a high field-effect mobility (uFE) of 107 cm2 V-1 s-1, an on/off current ratio (ION/IOFF) of >107, a subthreshold swing (SS) of 204 mV dec-1, a gate leakage of <10-6 A cm-2, while maintaining stable performance over 104 endurance cycles without degradation. Post-fabrication oxygen-plasma treatment is applied to achieve enhancement-mode operation and a depletion-load inverter is demonstrated, exhibiting a voltage gain of 69.8 V/V. These results demonstrate the great potential of LMP InOx as semiconducting channel in high-performance and power-efficient transistors for next-generation oxide electronics.