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

We investigated the use of nickel oxide (NiO) as a catalyst for the metal-induced crystallization. SiNx 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 15.9cm2V−1s−1, a threshold voltage of −5.2V, an Ion∕Ioff ratio of 1.6×107, and a gate voltage swing of 0.8V∕decade.