High-Performance Polycrystalline Silicon Thin-Film Transistors Based on Metal-Induced Crystallization in an Oxidizing Atmosphere

Author

Rongsheng Chen ; Wei Zhou ; Meng Zhang ; Man Wong ; Hoi-Sing Kwok

Author_Institution

State Key Lab. on Adv. Displays & Optoelectron. Technol., Hong Kong Univ. of Sci. & Technol., Hong Kong, China

Volume

36

Issue

5

fYear

2015

fDate

42125

Firstpage

460

Lastpage

462

Abstract

An oxidizing rather than the commonly used nonoxidizing atmosphere is used to carry out the thermal process required by the metal-induced crystallization (MIC) of amorphous silicon. Thin-film transistors fabricated on the resulting polycrystalline silicon (poly-Si) exhibit improved device characteristics. Since thermal oxidation is known to induce the injection of silicon interstitials, the improvement is attributed to a reduction in the defect population caused by the incorporation of the injected silicon interstitials in the grain boundaries of the MIC poly-Si.

Keywords

crystallisation; grain boundaries; metals; oxidation; silicon; thermal analysis; thin film transistors; MIC; defect population; device characteristic improvement; grain boundaries; high-performance polycrystalline thin film transistors; interstitial injection; metal-induced crystallization; nonoxidizing atmosphere; thermal oxidation process; Annealing; Atmosphere; Crystallization; Microwave integrated circuits; Nickel; Silicon; Thin film transistors; Polycrystalline silicon; metal-induced crystallization (MIC); oxygen annealing; thin-film transistors (TFTs);

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Electron Device Letters, IEEE

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

0741-3106

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/LED.2015.2409858

Filename

7056469