English

High-Mobility Indium Native Oxide Transistors via Liquid-Metal Printing in Air

Materials Science 2026-04-09 v1

Abstract

Oxide semiconductors have emerged as common channel materials in transistors and hold promise for next-generation electronics, yet achieving high mobility typically requires costly vacuum-based techniques. Here, ultrathin (5-nm) indium native oxide (InOx) prepared by ambient-air liquid-metal printing (LMP) at low temperature (250 {\deg}C), is applied as semiconducting channel in field-effect transistor (FET). The resulting InOx is found to be polycrystalline with large lateral grains that extend vertically throughout the film thickness. InOx FETs in a transfer length method (TLM) configuration demonstrate a high conductivity mobility (uCON) of 125 cm2 V-1 s-1, with systematic analysis of contact resistance confirming potential for channel length scaling. Integration with atomic-layer-deposited (ALD) gate dielectrics further reveals excellent compatibility, for instance, InOx FET integrated with HfO2 exhibits a high field-effect mobility (uFE) of 107 cm2 V-1 s-1, an on/off current ratio (ION/IOFF) of >107, a subthreshold swing (SS) of 204 mV dec-1, a gate leakage of <10-6 A cm-2, while maintaining stable performance over 104 endurance cycles without degradation. Post-fabrication oxygen-plasma treatment is applied to achieve enhancement-mode operation and a depletion-load inverter is demonstrated, exhibiting a voltage gain of 69.8 V/V. These results demonstrate the great potential of LMP InOx as semiconducting channel in high-performance and power-efficient transistors for next-generation oxide electronics.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2604.06656,
  title  = {High-Mobility Indium Native Oxide Transistors via Liquid-Metal Printing in Air},
  author = {Shi-Rui Zhang and Sanjoy Kumar Nandi and Felipe Kremer and Shimul Kanti Nath and Wenzhong Ji and Thomas Ratcliff and Li Li and Nicholas J. Ekins-Daukes and Teng Lu and Yun Liu and Robert Glen Elliman},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2604.06656},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces, Accepted