ABSTRACT As scaling of a‐IGZO transistors continues, hot carrier degradation from increased lateral electric fields significantly impacts device stability. However, previous studies on hot carrier degradation primarily focused on electron trapping in the gate dielectric or etch stop layer, revealing a gap in investigating channel‐related mechanisms. We propose a quantitative analysis method and mitigation strategy for hot carrier degradation, focusing on the a‐IGZO channel region. We separately extracted the effective Schottky barrier heights at the source/drain sides and analyzed defect states. As a result, after hot carrier stress, an asymmetric increase of 0.48 eV in the drain‐side barrier height was extracted. Space‐charge‐limited current measurements consistently confirmed the generation of defect states near the drain. Finally, by applying a self‐assembled monolayer treatment to stabilize metal–oxygen bonds in a‐IGZO, we successfully reduced the asymmetric threshold voltage shift after hot carrier stress by approximately 55% (from 0.48 to 0.22 V) and reduced the defect states in a‐IGZO by approximately 54% (from 3.6 × 10 7 to 1.6 × 10 7 eV −1 ).
Jin et al. (Mon,) studied this question.