Review Reports

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

see the attached file

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

See separate file

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

In the paper ‘Improvement of electrical performance by neutron irradiation treatment on IGZO thin film transistors’ Kwon S. and co-authors describe the effect of neutron irradiation treatment on IGZO based thin film transistors.

Their method is appealing because it does not rely on complex and laborious treatments but in my opinion the paper lacks additional data.

Being this method gentler compared to the ones of Ref 9 and 10, for example, it is reasonable to expect changes of less extent, especially related to the I-V characteristics. However, the device characterization does not report any statistic which can support the reliability of the claimed observations, especially regarding the figures of merit of the TFT.

The paper lack experimental evidences and a more accurate device analysis is necessary.

I would like the authors to address this point by providing additional experimental data related to their TFT characterization.

Best Regards

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

accepted

Author Response

Thanks for referee's decision.

Reviewer 3 Report

Dear authors,

Thanks for your kind reply.

Unfortunately, I still have many concerns regarding your work because you were not able to address my doubts.

With the following sentence 'the device characterization does not report any statistic which can support the reliability of the claimed observations', I would like to understand why you did not report any statistical analysis regarding your TFT and no error bars are associated to the presented values.

Ambient atmosphere strongly affects TFT (see doi: 10.1149/2.012301jss) TFT so the demonstration of device stability in this case is mandatory. 

Furthermore, I think that in order to demonstrate the permanent effects of neutron irradiation, you should rely on a robust statistical analysis.

 

Best Regards 

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 3

Reviewer 3 Report

Dear authors, 

Thanks for providing additional data regarding the electrical characterization of your IGZO-TFT. 

Unfortunately, I strongly believe your results are not sufficient for proving the effectiveness of your technique.

Neutron irradiation seems to improve device's performance just if the irradiation time is 10 seconds, in the other two cases the performance degrades or are comparable with the initial device' s state (see linear mobility and saturation mobility).

If short time exposure is the best option, why you did not optimize your protocol?

In addition, threshold voltage does not change at all (within the experimental error) so I don't see any improvements on this regards.

I think that the technique presented is promising but the paper lacks of proofs of its effectiveness and it should be enriched with additional data.

I don't see any correlation between your spectroscopic observations and the electrical performance of your device. 

Best Regards,