High performance polycrystalline thin-film transistors formed by copper metal induced unidirectional crystallization

Polycrystalline silicon thin-film transistors fabricated by metal induced lateral crystallization (MILC) have been demonstrated as promising devices for realizing electronics on large area, inexpensive glass substrates. However, it takes a relatively long time to crystallize amorphous silicon thin films. In this work, we proposed a new crystallization method using copper and nickel metals together and proved that this method could be used to fabricate thin-film transistors. It turned out that a four times faster crystallization rate could be obtained and that device performance was similar to conventional nickel MILC TFTs. This means that the proposed crystallization method is quite acceptable for practical use.