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 $1520\mathrm{c}{\mathrm{m}}^{-1}$, 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).

• Received 11 May 2018

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevMaterials.2.074601