Investigation of Parasitic Resistance Components in the Case of Microwave Irradiation in Poly-Si Annealing

Abstract

We fabricated transmission-line method (TLM)-type devices for analysis of the interface uniformity between an aluminum electrode and n-type silicon by using phosphorus implantation. For the dopant activation, we adopted novel microwave irradiation (MWI) as an alternative to rapid thermal annealing (RTA). Also, we investigated the contact resistance (RC), sheet resistance (RS), transfer length (LT) and specific contact resistance (ρC) that affected the thin-film transistor’s (TFT’s) performance through the TLM, and we compared parameters for various annealing methods. MWI showed a RC (2.175 Ω) which is similar to that for RTA (1.825 Ω). Also, MWI resulted in improved LT and ρC (4.426 μm, 0.48×10−4 Ω·cm2, respectively) characteristics compared to RTA (8.238 μm, 0.752 × 10 −4 Ω·cm2, respectively). Consequently, MWI, which has a lower thermal budget showed improved uniformity compared to RTA, and the total processing time was lower. Thus, we expect the MWI method to be an excellent choice for high-performance poly-Si TFT applications and to have various advantages.