The electrical and optical properties of the hydrogenated amorphous silicon (a-Si:H) films deposited by inductively coupled plasma (ICP) chemical vapor deposition (CVD) have been investigated. The ICP-CVD a-Si:H films deposited at the pressure of 30 mTorr exhibited the hydrogen content of 17 at. %, a photosensitivity of 106 at 100 mW/cm2 and a conductivity activation energy of 0.9 eV. A novel coplanar self-aligned a-Si:H thin film transistor was fabricated using Ni-silicide gate and source/drain electrodes. The simultaneous Ni-silicide formation of gate and source/drain regions using the stacked layers of thin a-Si:H, silicon nitride (SiNx) and a-Si:H reduces the offset length between gate and source/drain, which leads to the coplanar a-Si:H thin film transistor (TFT). This self-aligned a-Si:H TFT exhibited a field effect mobility of 0.44 cm2/V s, threshold voltage of 5.3 V and subthreshold slope of 0.5 V/dec. The coplanar geometry reduces the parasitic capacitance and parasitic resistance compared with those of conventional staggered a-Si:H TFTs.