| Summary: | Recently, tin oxide (SnO<sub>2</sub>) has been the preferred thin film material for semiconductor devices such as thin-film transistors (TFTs) due to its low cost, non-toxicity, and superior electrical performance. However, the high oxygen vacancy (V<sub>O</sub>) concentration leads to poor performance of SnO<sub>2</sub> thin films and devices. In this paper, with tetraethyl orthosilicate (TEOS) as the Si source, which can decompose to release heat and supply energy when annealing, Si doped SnO<sub>2</sub> (STO) films and inverted staggered STO TFTs were successfully fabricated by a solution method. An XPS analysis showed that Si doping can effectively inhibit the formation of V<sub>O</sub>, thus reducing the carrier concentration and improving the quality of SnO<sub>2</sub> films. In addition, the heat released from TEOS can modestly lower the preparation temperature of STO films. By optimizing the annealing temperature and Si doping content, 350 °C annealed STO TFTs with 5 at.% Si exhibited the best device performance: I<sub>off</sub> was as low as 10<sup>−10</sup> A, I<sub>on</sub>/I<sub>off</sub> reached a magnitude of 10<sup>4</sup>, and V<sub>on</sub> was 1.51 V. Utilizing TEOS as an Si source has a certain reference significance for solution-processed metal oxide thin films in the future.
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