Improved Electrical Performance and Uniformity of MILC Poly-Si TFTs Manufactured Using Drive-In Nickel-Induced Lateral Crystallization

A new manufacturing method for polycrystalline silicon (poly-Si) thin-film transistors (TFTs) using drive-in nickel-induced lateral crystallization (DILC) was proposed. In DILC, a F
⁺
implantation was used to drive Ni in the alpha-Si layer. To reduce Ni contamination, the remained Ni film was then removed and subsequently annealed at 590 degC. It was found that DILC TFTs exhibit high field-effect mobility, low threshold voltage, low subthreshold slope, high on-state current, lower trap-state density, smaller standard deviations, and low off-state leakage current compared with conventional Ni-metal-induced lateral crystallization TFTs.