• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2000.02a
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• pp.186-186
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• 2000

After LeComber et al. reported the first amorphous hydrogenated silicon (a-Si: H) TFT, many laboratories started the development of an active matrix LCDs using a-Si:H TFTs formed on glass substrate. With increasing the display area and pixel density of TFT-LCD, however, high mobility TFTs are required for pixel driver of TF-LCD in order to shorten the charging time of the pixel electrodes. The most important of these drawbacks is a-Si's electron mobiliy, which is the speed at which electrons can move through each transistor. The problem of low carier mobility for the a-Si:H TFTs can be overcome by introducing polycrystalline silicon (poly-Si) thin film instead of a-Si:H as a semiconductor layer of TFTs. Therefore, poly-Si has gained increasing interest and has been investigated by many researchers. Recnetly, fabrication of such poly-Si TFT-LCD panels with VGA pixel size and monolithic drivers has been reported, . Especially, fabricating poly-Si TFTs at a temperature mach lower than the strain point of glass is needed in order to have high mobility TFTs on large-size glass substrate, and the monolithic drivers will reduce the cost of TFT-LCDs. The conventional methods to fabricate poly-Si films are low pressure chemical vapor deposition (LPCVD0 as well as solid phase crystallization (SPC), pulsed rapid thermal annealing(PRTA), and eximer laser annealing (ELA). However, these methods have some disadvantages such as high deposition temperature over $600^{\circ}C$, small grain size (<50nm), poor crystallinity, and high grain boundary states. Therefore the low temperature and large area processes using a cheap glass substrate are impossible because of high temperature process. In this study, therefore, we have deposited poly-Si thin films on si(100) and glass substrates at growth temperature of below 40$0^{\circ}C$ using newly developed high rate magnetron sputtering method. To improve the sputtering yield and the growth rate, a high power (10~30 W/cm2) sputtering source with unbalanced magnetron and Si ion extraction grid was designed and constructed based on the results of computer simulation. The maximum deposition rate could be reached to be 0.35$\mu$m/min due to a high ion bombardment. This is 5 times higher than that of conventional sputtering method, and the sputtering yield was also increased up to 80%. The best film was obtained on Si(100) using Si ion extraction grid under 9.0$\times$10-3Torr of working pressure and 11 W/cm2 of the target power density. The electron mobility of the poly-si film grown on Si(100) at 40$0^{\circ}C$ with ion extraction grid shows 96 cm2/V sec. During sputtering, moreover, the characteristics of si source were also analyzed with in situ Langmuir probe method and optical emission spectroscopy.

• Journal of the Korean Vacuum Society
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• v.12 no.3
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• pp.168-173
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• 2003

Recently, according to the rapid progress in Flat-panel-display industry, there has been a growing interest in the poly-Si process. Compared with a-Si, poly-Si offers significantly high carrier mobility, so it has many advantages to high response rate in Thin Film Transistors (TFT's). We have investigated a new process for the high temperature Solid Phase Crystallization (SPC) of a-Si films without any damages on glass substrates using thin film heater. because the thin film heater annealing method is a very rapid thermal process, it has very low thermal budget compared to the conventional furnace annealing. therefore it has some characteristics such as selective area crystallization, high temperature annealing using glass substrates. A 500 $\AA$-thick a-Si film was crystallized by the heat transferred from the resistively heated thin film heaters through $SiO_2$ intermediate layer. a 1000 $\AA$-thick $TiSi_2$ thin film confined to have 15 $\textrm{mm}^{-1}$ length and various line width from 200 to 400 $\mu\textrm{m}$ was used as the thin film heater. By this method, we successfully crystallized 500 $\AA$-thick a-Si thin films at a high temperature estimated above $850^{\circ}C$ in a few seconds without any thermal deformation of g1ass substrates. These surprising results were due to the very small thermal budget of the thin film heaters and rapid thermal behavior such as fast heating and cooling. Moreover, we investigated the time dependency of the SPC of a-Si films by observing the crystallization phenomena at every 20 seconds during annealing process. We suggests the individual managements of nucleation and grain growth steps of poly-Si in SPC of a-Si with the precise control of annealing temperature. In conclusion, we show the SPC of a-Si by the thin film heaters and many advantages of the thin film heater annealing over other processes

• Proceedings of the KIEE Conference
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• 1996.07c
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• pp.1502-1504
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• 1996

The effects of electrical stress in hydrogen passivated and as-fabricated poly-Si TFT's are investigated. It is observed that the charge trapping in the gate dielectric is the dominant degradation mechanism in poly-Si TFT's which has been stressed by the gate bias alone while the creation of defects in the poly-Si film is prevalent in gate and drain bias stressed devices. The degradation due to the gate bias stress is dramatically reduced with hydrogenation time while the degradation due to the gate and drain bias stress is increased a little. From the experimental results, it is considered that hydrogenation suppress the charge trapping at gate dielectrics as well as improve the characteristics of poly-Si TFT's.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers Conference
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• 1999.05a
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• pp.597-600
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• 1999

A solar cell conversion efficiency was degraded by grain boundary effect in polycrystalline silicon To reduce grain boundary effect, we performed a preferential grain boundary etching, POC$_3$ n-type emitter doping, and then ITO film growth on poly- Si. Among the various preferential etchants, Schimmel etch solution exhibited the best result having grain boundary etch depth higher than 10 ${\mu}{\textrm}{m}$. RF magnetron sputter grown ITO films showed a low resistivity of 10$^{-4}$ $\Omega$ -cm and high transmittance of 85 %. With well fabricated poly-Si solar cells, we were able to achieve as high as 15 % conversion efficiency at the input power of 20 mW/$\textrm{cm}^2$.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers
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• v.16 no.1
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• pp.26-32
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• 2003

Then-channel poly-Si thin-film transistors (poly-Si TFT's) formed by solid phase crystallization (SPC) method on glass were measured to obtain the electrical parameters such as of I-V characteristics, mobility, leakage current, threshold voltage, and subthreshold slope. Then, devices were analyzed to obtain the reliability and appliability on TFT-LCD with large-size and high density. In n-channel poly-Si TFT with 5$\mu\textrm{m}$/2$\mu\textrm{m}$, 8$\mu\textrm{m}$, 30$\mu\textrm{m}$ devices of channel width/length, the field effect mobilities are 111, 116, 125 $\textrm{cm}^2$/V-s and leakage currents are 0.6, 0.1, and 0.02 pA/$\mu\textrm{m}$, respectively. Low threshold voltage and subthreshold slope, and good ON-OFF ratio are shown, as well. Thus. the poly-Si TFT's used by SPC are expected to be applied on TFT-LCD with large-size and high density, which can integrate the display panel and peripheral circuit on a targe glass substrate.

• Korean Journal of Materials Research
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• v.17 no.2
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• pp.115-120
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• 2007

Polycrystalline silicon (poly-Si) thin film transistors (TFTs) might be fabricated on the mica substrate and transferred to a flexible plastic substrate because mica can be easily cleaved into a thin layer. To overcome the adhesion and stress problem between poly-Si film and mica substrate, a buffer layer consisting of $SiO_x/Ta/Ti$ three layers has been developed. The $SiO_x$ layer is for electrical isolation, the Ti layer is for adhesion of $SiO_{x}$ and mica. and Ta is for stress relief between $SiO_x$ and Ti. A TFT was fabricated on the mica substrate by a conventional Si process and was successfully transferred to a plastic substrate.

• Transactions on Electrical and Electronic Materials
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• v.12 no.3
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• pp.102-105
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• 2011

This work describes the characteristics of zinc oxide (ZnO) thin films formed on a polycrystalline (poly) 3C-SiC buffer layer using a sol-gel process. The deposited ZnO films were characterized using X-ray diffraction, scanning electron microscopy, and photoluminescence (PL) spectra. ZnO thin films grown on the poly 3C-SiC buffer layer had a nanoparticle structure and porous film. The effects of post-annealing on ZnO film were also studied. The PL spectra at room temperature confirmed the crystal quality and optical properties of ZnO thin films formed on the 3C-SiC buffer layer were improved due to close lattice mismatch in the ZnO/3C-SiC interface.

• 한국정보디스플레이학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2005.07a
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• pp.297-300
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• 2005

The characteristics of polycrystalline silicon thin-film transistors (poly-Si TFTs) fabricated using sputter deposited amorphous silicon (a-Si) precursor films are investigated. The a-Si films were deposited on flexible polymer substrates using argon-helium mixture gases to minimize the argon incorporation into the film. The precursor films were then laser annealed by using a XeCl excimer laser and a four-mask-processed poly-Si TFT was fabricated with fully self-aligned top gate structure. The fabricated pMOS TFT showed field-effect mobility of $32.4cm^2/V{\cdot}s$ and on/off ratio of $10^6$.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers Conference
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• 2007.06a
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• pp.125-126
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• 2007

Polycrystalline silicon thin-film-transistors (Poly-Si TFT's) with a amorphous-$Si_xGe_y$ seed layer have been fabricated to improve the performance of TFT. The dependence of crystal structure and electrical characteristics on the the Ge fractions in $Si_xGe_y$ seed layer were investigated. As a result, the increase of grain size and enhancement of electrical characteristics were obtained from the poly-Si TFT's with amorphous-SixGey seed layer.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers
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• v.24 no.6
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• pp.433-439
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• 2011

Poly Si TFTs (poly silicon thin film transistors) with p channel those are annealed HT (high temperature) with gate poly crystalline silicon and LT (low temperature) with metal gate electrode were fabricated on quartz substrate using the analyzed data and compared according to the activated grade silicon thin films and the size of device channel. The electrical characteristics of HT poly-Si TFTs increased those are the on current, electron mobility and decrease threshold voltage by the quality of particles of active thin films annealed at high temperature. But the on/off current ratio reduced by increase of the off current depend on the hot carrier applied to high gate voltage. Even though the size of the particles annealed at low temperature are bigger than HT poly-Si TFTs due to defect in the activated grade poly crystal silicon and the grain boundary, the characteristics of LT poly-Si TFTs were investigated deterioration phenomena those are decrease the electric off current, electron mobility and increase threshold voltage. The results of transconductance show that slope depend on the quality of particles and the amplitude depend on the size of the active silicon particles.