Atmospheric pressure plasma processing and layer transfer technique for thin-film device fabrication on glass and plastic substrates

Abstract

Crystalline growth from melt during microthermal-plasma-jet (µ-TPJ) irradiation to amorphous silicon (a-Si) film has been directly observed by highspeed camera. Long lateral growth perpendicular to the oval-shaped liquid-solid interface results in formation of random grain boundaries (GBs). Introduction of strip pattern markedly reduces random GBs and enables singlecrystalline growth at predetermined channel regions. Nand p-channel thin-film transistors (TFTs) showed high performance and small characteristic variability, and operation of 8-bit shift register at a supply voltage of 5V with the clock frequency of 50 MHz has been achieved. In addition, we propose a local layer transfer technique utilizing meniscus force of water, which enables formation of single-crystalline silicon (100) layer on glass and polyethylene terephthalate (PET) substrates. High mobility TFTs of 1226 and 609 cm 2 V -1 s -1 , respectively, have been successfully fabricated on each substrate.