Hydrogen is known to be present as an impurity in amorphous oxide semiconductors at the 0.1% level. The behavior of hydrogen and oxygen vacancies in amorphous In-Ga-Zn-O is studied using density functional supercell calculations. We show that the hydrogens pair up at oxygen vacancies in the amorphous network, where they form metal-H-metal bridge bonds. These bonds are shown to create filled defect gap states lying just above the valence band edge, infrared modes at about 1400 and 1520cm−1, and they are shown to give a consistent mechanism to explain the negative bias illumination stress instability found in oxide semiconductors such as In-Ga-Zn-O (IGZO).The authors acknowledge funding from EPSRC Grants No.
EP/P005152/1
