Realization of Maximum 2 A/mm Drain Current on Top-Gate Atomic-Layer-Thin Indium Oxide Transistors by Thermal Engineering

In this work, we demonstrate the record high maximum drain current (
${I}_{{\mathrm {D}}}$
) of 2 A/mm of top-gate (TG) indium oxide (In
₂
O
₃
) transistors. The scaled and atomic-layer-deposited (ALD) In
₂
O
₃
transistors have channel length (
${L}_{{\mathrm {ch}}}$
) down to 40 nm and channel thickness (
${T}_{{\mathrm {ch}}}$
) down to 1.3 nm. Besides, the thermal budget of the whole material formation and device fabrication process is as low as 225 °C, making it compatible with back-end-of-line (BEOL) technologies by a huge margin. On the other hand, highly resistive silicon is utilized to serve as a desired high thermal conducting substrate to dissipate the generated heat efficiently as a larger current is conducted under a larger voltage bias. It greatly alleviates the self-heating effect (SHE) and allows an approximately 100% higher drain current. Quantitative studies of the SHE and channel temperature at ON-state with SiO
₂
/Si and highly resistive silicon substrates are also presented.