Poly-Si thin-film transistors on steel substrates

We report the successful fabrication of poly-Si thin-film transistors (TFT's) on stainless steel substrates. The TFT's were fabricated on a 500 mu m thick polished stainless steel substrate using furnace crystallized amorphous Si deposited by PECVD. These devices typically have threshold voltages of 8.6 V, linear effective mobilities of 6.2 cm(2)/V.s and subthreshold slopes of 0.93 decade/V. This work demonstrates the feasibility of poly-Si TFT's on stainless steel substrates and identifies some critical issues involved in poly-Si processing on stainless steel. This will enable the fabrication of arrays with integrated drivers on a cheap, flexible and durable substrate for various display [1] and other large area array microelectronic applications.