There are a wide variety of metal oxides and such metal oxides are used for various applications. Indium oxide is a well-known material and is used as a material for transparent electrodes which are needed for liquid crystal display devices or the like.
Some metal oxides have semiconductor characteristics. Examples of such metal oxides having semiconductor characteristics include tungsten oxide, tin oxide, indium oxide, zinc oxide, and the like. A thin film transistor in which a channel formation region is formed using such a metal oxide has been already known (see, for example, Patent Documents 1 to 4, Non-Patent Document 1, and the like).
Examples of metal oxides include not only a single-component oxide but also a multi-component oxide. For example, InGaO3(ZnO)m (m: natural number) having a homologous phase is known as a multi-component oxide semiconductor including In, Ga, and Zn (see, for example, Non-Patent Documents 2 to 4 and the like).
Furthermore, it has been confirmed that an oxide semiconductor including such an In—Ga—Zn-based oxide can also be applied to a channel formation region of a thin film transistor (see, for example, Patent Document 5, Non-Patent Documents 5 and 6, and the like).
In order to achieve high speed operation of a transistor or the like, miniaturization of the transistor is needed. For example, in Patent Document 6, a thin film transistor including an oxide semiconductor used for a channel layer with a thickness of about 10 nm or smaller is disclosed. In Non-Patent Document 7, a thin film transistor including an oxide semiconductor whose channel length is 2 μm to 100 μm is disclosed.
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