Thin-Film Transistors with Polycrystalline Silicon Prepared by a New Annealing Method

Abstract

A new annealing method, nucleation by rapid thermal annealing (RTA) and grain growth in furnace annealing, has been developed to obtain high-quality polycrystalline silicon (poly-Si) and to reduce the long annealing time for solid-phase crystallization (SPC) of amorphorus silicon (a-Si) film without a decrease in grain size. Poly-Si thin-film transistors (TFTs) were fabricated using this method and the electrical properties of poly-Si film were evaluated. We obtained higher field effect mobility (25 cm 2 /(V·s)) and better uniformity (≤5% in 5-inch wafer) than those obtainable by the conventional furnace annealing.