High Performance Low Temperature Polycrystalline Silicon Thin Film Transistors on Non-alkaline Glass Produced Using Diode Pumped Solid State Continuous Wave Laser Lateral Crystallization

Abstract

High performance low temperature polycrystalline silicon (poly-Si) thin film transistors (TFTs) with large grains were created using diode pumped solid state (DPSS) continuous wave (CW) laser lateral crystallization (CLC), employing fabrication processes at 450°C. Field-effect mobilities of 566 cm²/Vs for the n-channel and 200 cm²/Vs for the p-channel were obtained for a thick Si film (100–150 nm) on a 300×300 mm non-alkaline glass substrate. The high performance of the TFTs is attributed to the predominantly (100)-oriented very large grains. With a decreasing Si-film thickness, the grain size decreases, and the surface orientation of the grain changes from (100) to other orientations. These effects lead to reduced field-effect mobility with decreasing Si-film thickness, but it is easy to obtain a high field-effect mobility of over 300 cm²/Vs, even with a 50 nm thick Si film, without special processing techniques. A complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) ring oscillator was fabricated using a thin Si film 65 nm thick to demonstrate the high circuit performance of CLC poly-Si TFTs by applying the simplest CMOS process technology. A delay of 400 ps/stage at a gate length of 1.5 µm and a supply voltage of V _dd=5.0 (V) was produced on a large non-alkaline glass substrate utilizing a fabrication temperature of 450°C. This crystallization method will lead to the fabrication of high-performance and cheap Si-LSI circuits on large non-alkaline glass substrates.