ZnO-based low-voltage inverter with quantum-well-structured nanohybrid dielectric

We report on the fabrication of 2-V-operating ZnO-based inverter with two n-channel thin-film transistors (TFTs) on 22-nm-thin organic/inorganic nanohybrid dielectric, which contains AlOx/TiOx/AlOx in triple-layer structure. The inverter shows a high voltage gain of similar to 20 under the supply voltage (V-DD) of 2 V but with a marginal transition voltage of 0.1 V (operation range of 0-2 V). To control the transition voltage to a more adequate value, an 8-V gate pulse was applied on driving ZnO-TFT so that some of the channel electrons would be tunneled through the AlOx-based barrier and trapped in the TiOx-based layer. Our inverter then displayed an optimum transition voltage of 0.75 V.