Nickel oxide-induced crystallization of silicon for use in thin film transistors with a Si Nx diffusion filter

We investigated the use of nickel oxide (NiO) as a catalyst for the metal-induced crystallization. Si Nx serves as a diffusion filter that forms an effective barrier to Ni and also acts as a passivation layer for metal contaminants. The NiO has a constant area density of 8.22× 106 Ni atoms cm-2. This allows enough depletion regions for the growth of disklike grains. The thin film transistor exhibited a field-effective mobility of 15.9 cm2 V-1 s-1, a threshold voltage of -5.2 V, an Ion Ioff ratio of 1.6× 107, and a gate voltage swing of 0.8 Vdecade.