Significant improvement of device performance was observed for the excimer laser annealed ͑ELA͒ poly-Si thin film transistors ͑TFTs͒ by the incorporation of fluorine atoms using the ion implantation technique. This is presumably due to the relaxation of mechanical stress at the poly-Si/buffer-oxide interface and the passivation of trap-states in the poly-Si channel region and at the gate-oxide/poly-Si interface. We achieved high performance ELA poly-Si TFTs with a very low off-current of ϳ0.26 pA/m and a very high On/Off current ratio of about 10 8 . Moreover, the fluorine ion implantation also greatly improved the reliability of the ELA poly-Si TFTs with respect to the hot-carrier stress, presumably due to the formation of strong Si-F bonds.Excimer laser annealing ͑ELA͒ is a promising scheme for the crystallization of amorphous silicon in the fabrication of lowtemperature processed ͑LTP͒ poly-Si thin film transistors ͑TFTs͒ because the laser process can result in high-quality polysilicon films with very few in-grain defects. 1,2 However, a grain size of less than 100 nm as a result of extremely high solidification velocity inherent to the ELA process has been a troublesome problem. 2,3 Thus, the ELA polysilicon films usually contain a high density of grain boundaries, leading to lowered carrier mobility and degraded performance of the TFTs. Many techniques have been employed to reduce the detrimental effects of grain boundaries by either enlarging the grain size 4,5 or passivating the grain boundaries. 6,7 In addition, there is also a serious problem of mechanical tensile stress associated with the ELA process because of the large mismatch of thermal expansion coefficient between the molten polysilicon film and the buffer oxide layer of glass substrates. It is well known that the mechanical stress at the interface usually induces a large number of interface defect-states and thus deteriorates the electrical characteristics of the metal oxide semiconductor ͑MOS͒ devices. 8,9 Nevertheless, only a few studies have been reported regarding the effects of this mechanical stress on the performance of the ELA poly-Si TFTs. 5,10,11 In recent years, the incorporation of fluorine into gate-dielectrics of MOS devices by various processes has been used to induce the local strain relaxation and thus reduce the interface state density of MOS field-effect transistors ͑MOSFETs͒. 8,9 It was also reported that the defect states of the solid phase crystallized ͑SPC͒ LTP poly-Si TFTs can be passivated by fluorine ion implantation; 12 however, the SPC poly-Si TFTs have not experienced a large thermal expansion mismatch at the poly-Si/buffer-oxide interface because of the lack of laser irradiation process. Moreover, it was found that diffused fluorine spices from the SiO x F y dielectric can reduce the defect state density in the active channels of TFTs. 13,14 In this work, fluorine ions were implanted into the active regions before excimer laser irradiation for the fabrication of the high-performance ELA poly-Si TFTs. The implantatio...