The long-term goal of this research project is the development of solution-based inorganic dielectric and semiconductor materials for inkjet printed electronics. The main focus of this thesis involves testing of the materials and devices under development. A new solution-based inorganic dielectric material (HfOSO₄), given the name hafsox, is developed and...
The objective of this thesis is to provide an initial demonstration of the feasibility of constructing highly transparent active electronic devices. Such a demonstration is successfully achieved in the fabrication of ZnO-based thin film transistors (TFTs) exhibiting transparency greater than ~90% in the visible portion of the electromagnetic spectrum and...
An analytical expression is derived which allows the
bulk minority carrier recombination lifetime, t, and the
surface recombination velocity, S, to be extracted from a
single noncontact photoconductivity decay (PCD) measurement. This analytical expression is rather complex, but
can be reduced to a first order approximation. The first
order approximation...
The aim of this dissertation is to develop non-traditional approaches to alternating-current thin-film electroluminescent (ACTFEL) device fabrication. ACTFEL technology suffers from a lack of adequately bright and efficient primary-color phosphors and cannot presently compete in the low-cost display market. Therefore the research presented in this dissertation focuses on an exploration...
Current leading thin-film solar cell technologies, i.e., cadmium telluride (CdTe) and copper indium gallium diselenide (CIGS), employ elements which are either toxic (Cd), or rare and/or expensive (In, Te, Ga, and Cd). The aim of this thesis is to investigate new, abundant, non-toxic p-type semiconductors for potential solar absorber application....
The goal of this thesis study is to develop an activated reactive evaporation (ARE) system and to demonstrate its utility by fabricating-alternating current thin-film electroluminescent (ACTFEL) oxide phosphor devices. ARE entails evaporation in an activated gas. The main ARE system components are three thermal evaporation sources, a microwave power supply,...
The achievements of this thesis are the development of several models for the SPICE (Simulation Program with Integrated Circuit Emphasis) simulation of alternating-current thin-film electroluminescent (ACTFEL) devices, organic light-emitting devices (OLEDs), and polymer light-emitting devices (PLEDs). First, an ACTFEL model based on the built-in HSPICE Fowler-Nordheim tunneling diode is developed,...
This thesis focuses on two aspects of transparent electronics, SnO₂ transparent thin-film transistors (TTFTs) and transparent circuits. Both depletion- and enhancement-mode SnO₂ TTFTs are realized. The maximum effective mobility for the depletion- and enhancement-mode devices are 2 cm²V⁻¹s⁻¹ and 0.8 cm²V⁻¹s⁻¹, respectively. A variety of techniques to decrease the carrier...
Amorphous metal thin films (AMTFs) are of potential use for metal-insulator-metal (MIM) tunnel diode applications due to their ultra-smooth surfaces, a consequence of their amorphous microstructure. The objective of this thesis is to design a thermally-stable AMTF capable of maintaining MIM tunnel diode performance after a post-deposition anneal in excess...