Plasma hydrogenation of metal-induced laterally crystallized thin film transistors

The device characteristics of conventional metal-induced laterally crystallized thin film transistors (MILC-TFT's) are adversely affected by the existence of the continuous grain boundaries in the depletion regions of the metallurgical source and drain junctions. It has been shown that by introducing an extra lithographic masking step, the detrimental effects can be eliminated by separating the grain boundaries from the junction depletion regions. In this work, it is demonstrated that the traps in these grain boundaries can also be efficiently passivated using simple plasma hydrogenation, resulting in simultaneous improvements in the threshold voltage, the subthreshold slope, the mobility, the drain breakdown voltage, and the leakage current.