Electronic Materials Letters , vol. 4, no. 2, pp.51-55, June, 2008

DOI :

Crystallization of Amorphous-Silicon by Seed Layer and its Polycrystalline-Silicon Thin Film Transistors

Bong-Kwan Shin, Young-Su Kim, Jae-Hwan Kwon, Se-Wan Son, Seong-Hoon Yoo, Yong-Woo Lee, Jin-Hyun Park, and Seung-Ki Joo^*
Seoul National University

Abstract : Recently, it was reported that amorphous silicon (a-Si) thin films could be crystallized at a low temperature (~500℃) using the metal-induced lateral crystallization (MILC) process. The MILC process enables the crystallization of a-Si thin films with less metal contamination. However, some problems remain that need to be solved, such as the complicated process steps and the long annealing time required to crystallize a-Si. In this work, we propose a novel method that simplifies the process and reduces the processing time using a seed layer, which resulted in the crystallization of the a-Si thin film in a shorter time. We also fabricated poly-Si TFTs to confirm the quality of the poly-Si that was crystallized by the novel method. The poly- Si TFTs using the Ni seed layer, which exhibited a filed effect mobility of 42.1cm²/Vs and an on/off ratio of 1.9×10⁶ V/dec; these values are similar to those of the poly-Si TFTs fabricated using the conventional MILC process.

Keyword : MILC, seed layer, Ni silicide, poly-Si TFTs