High Field-Emission Stability of Offset-Thin-Film Transistor-Controlled Al-Doped Zinc Oxide Nanowires

Abstract

Aluminum-doped zinc oxide (AZO) nanowire (NW) arrays incorporating an offset thin-film transistor (offset-TFT) have been proposed to achieve high field-emission (FE) stability. The AZO NW field emission arrays (FEAs) were hydrothermally grown at a low temperature of 85 degrees C. The uncontrolled AZO NW FEAs demonstrated superior FE characteristics (i.e., turn-on field of similar to 2.17 V/mu m and threshold field of similar to 3.43 V/mu m) compared with those of the conventional CNT FEAs grown at a temperature below 600 degrees C. However, uncontrolled AZO NW FEAs show a larger current fluctuation of 15.6%. Therefore, the offset-TFTs were used to control the AZO NW FEAs. Consequently, the fluctuation of AZO NW FEAs could be significantly reduced to less than 2%. This novel field emission device exhibits good emission stability, low-voltage controllability, low-temperature processing, and structural simplicity, making it promising for applications in flat panel displays. (C) 2011 The Japan Society of Applied Physics