The stability of devices and circuits formed using various low temperature poly-Si TFT technologies

The author discusses instability due to hot carrier degradation. It has been shown that degradations to both the drive current and the leakage current of TFTs result at high drain biases. This occurs for both high and low temperature processed devices, and for both p and n channels. The evidence suggests that this is due to a combination of effects, the formation of interface acceptor and donor states, and to electron and hole trapping in the gate oxide. In view of the importance of hot carrier degradation effects in poly-Si TFTs the author concentrates on these effects, their dependencies on fabrication technology and device structure, and their control