Towards manufacturing high uniformity polysilicon circuits through TFT contact barrier engineering

Abstract The predicted 50 billion devices connected to the Internet of Things by 2020 has renewed interest in polysilicon technology for high performance new sensing and control circuits, in addition to traditional display usage. Yet, the polycrystalline nature of the material presents significant challenges when used in transistors with strongly scaled channel lengths due to non-uniformity in device performance. For these new applications to materialize as viable products, uniform electrical characteristics on large areas will be essential. Here, we report on the effect of deliberately engineered potential barrier at the source of polysilicon thin-film transistors, yielding highly-uniform on-current (