Low Temperature Polycrystalline Si TFTs Fabricated with Directionally Crystallized Si Film

Abstract

ABSTRACTThe comparison of TFTs fabricated on films processed by conventional excimer laser an- nealing (ELA) and sequential lateral solidification (SLS) demonstrates the dependence of the device characteristics on the microstructure of the device channel region. We report the perform- ance characteristics of non-self-aligned coplanar n- and p-channel low temperature TFTs fabricated on 1000-Å-thick films on Corning 1737 glass substrates that were directionally solidified using SLS. The devices were aligned so that the grain boundaries were parallel to the direction of the source-drain current flow. These results were compared with those obtained from devices fabricated on conventional ELA-processed polycrystalline Si films (with average grain size of ∼3000 Å) with identical methods. The values for channel mobility obtained from the SLS TFTs are ∼370 cm2/Vsec for n-channel and ∼140 cm2/Vsec for p-channel devices, compared to ∼100 and ∼60 respectively for ELA TFTs. Other device characteristics of SLS TFTs were Ion/Ioff > 107 at Vd=0.1V, and subthreshold slopes less than 0.5V/dec. We further discuss the physical implications of the results and present additional details of the devices.