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In this paper, NH3 plasma directly applied to the surface of poly-Si channel is studied for the development of high-performance low-temperature polycrystalline-silicon thin-film transistors (LTPS-TFTs) with HfO2 high- \kappa gate dielectric. The reduction of threshold voltage from 1.52 to 0.62 V, the decrease of subthreshold swing from 227 to 151 mV/decade, and the enhancement of field effect mobility \mu _{\mathrm {FE}} from 31 to 65 cm ^{\mathrm {\mathbf {2}}}$ /Vs are observed after NH3 plasma surface treatment. It can be attributed to the NH3 plasma surface treatment enabling defect passivation and plasma-induced interfacial layer (PIL) growth. To decouple the impacts of defect passivation and PIL growth, the device without PIL is also fabricated. This paper demonstrates the important impacts of NH3 plasma surface treatment on the improvement of electrical characteristics of LTPS-TFTs. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this paper, the opposite impacts of N2O plasma surface treatment on the n- and p-channel low-temperature poly-Si thin-film transistors (LTPS-TFTs) with HfO2 gate dielectric are investigated. Significant performance improvement of n-channel LTPS-TFT by N2O plasma surface treatment is observed, including threshold voltage reduction \Delta V\mathrm {\mathbf {TH}}\sim -0.57 V, 1.55× higher transconductance G\mathit {m} , and 1.82× higher driving current I{\rm{drv}} . However, p-channel LTPS-TFT shows serious performance degradation after N2O plasma surface treatment, including threshold voltage increase \Delta V\mathrm {\mathbf {TH}}~\sim -0.99 V, transconductance G\mathit {m} reduction, and driving current I\mathrm {\mathbf {drv}} degradation. The difference of the two mechanisms of N2O plasma surface treatment, namely, plasma induced interfacial layer (PIL) growth effect and trap passivation effect on poly-Si, is elaborated by a process of the PIL removal after the PIL growth. As a result, the trap passivation effect benefits both n- and p-channel LTPS-TFTs. The PIL growth effect shows the opposite impacts on the n- and p-channel LTPS-TFTs, that benefits n-channel LTPS-TFT and degrades p-channel LTPS-TFT seriously. Therefore, the negative impacts of N2O plasma surface treatment on the p-channel LTPS-TFTs can be eliminated by a PIL removal step in the process. These results would be critical for the applications of system-on-panel and 3-D integrated circuit. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]