• Korean Journal of Materials Research
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• v.14 no.7
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• pp.477-481
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• 2004

High quality polycrystalline silicon is very critical part of the high quality thin film transistor(TFT) for display devices. Metal induced lateral crystallization(MILC) is one of the most successful technologies to crystallize the amorphous silicon at low temperature(below $550^{\circ}C$) and uses conventional and large glass substrate. In this study, we observed that the MILC behavior changed with abrupt variation of the amorphous silicon active pattern width. We explained these phenomena with the novel MILC mechanism model. The 10 nm thick Ni layers were deposited on the glass substrate having various amorphous silicon patterns. Then, we annealed the sample at $550^{\circ}C$ with rapid thermal annealing(RTA) apparatus and measured the crystallized length by optical microscope. When MILC progress from narrow-width-area(the width was $w_2$) to wide-width-area(the width was $w_1$), the MILC rate decreased dramatically and was not changed for several hours(incubation time). Also the incubation time increased as the ratio, $w_1/w_2$, get larger. We can explain these phenomena with the tensile stress that was caused by volume shrinkage due to the phase transformation from amorphous silicon to crystalline silicon.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers Conference
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• 1993.05a
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• pp.96-99
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• 1993

Electrical properties of the Thin Film Transistor(TFT) electrode metal films were investigated through the Test Elements Group(TEG) experiment. The main purpose of this investigation was to characterize the electrical resistance properties of patterned metal films with respect to the variations of film thickness and TEG metal line width. Aluminum(Al), Tantalum(Ta) and Chromium(Cr) that are currently used as TFT electrode films were selected as the probed metal films. To date, no work in the electrical characterizations of patterned electrodes of a-Si TFT was accomplished. Bulk resistance$(R_b)$, sheet resistance$(R_s)$, and resistivities($\rho$) of TEG patterned metal lines were obtained. Electrical continuity test of metal film lines was also performed in order to investigate the stability of metallization process. Almost uniform-linear variations of the electrical properties with respect to the metal line displacements was also observed.