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 wit...
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 42.1㎠/Vs and an on/off ratio of 1.9×10(6) V/dec; these values are similar to those of the poly-Si TFTs fabricated using the conventional MILC process.