Amorphous IGZO TFTs and circuits on conformable aluminum substrates

•We reported fabrication of a-IGZO TFTs on engineered aluminum substrates.•IGZO TFTs on the aluminum substrates displayed high performance comparable to the reported IGZO TFTs on glass substrates.•Stability of the IGZO TFTs under simultaneous gate and drain bias stress as well as mechanical bending was investigated.•The results highlight the potential of aluminum substrates for the use in future large area electronics applications.

This paper reports the characteristics of a-IGZO TFTs and circuits fabricated on conformable aluminum substrates. TFTs with field-effect mobility of up to 15.3 cm2/V s, average threshold voltage of 5.2 V, and off current less than 10−12 were demonstrated at zero strain; applying mechanical tensile strain up to 1.25% through bending was found to have a beneficial result to the device characteristics as mobility increased and threshold voltage decreased. These results highlight the potential of aluminum substrates for the use in future display and other large area electronics applications.