Thermal analysis on the degradation of poly-silicon TFTs under AC stress

In this work, the degradation mechanism of N-channel poly-silicon thin-film transistor (poly-Si TFT) has been investigated under dynamic voltage stress at room temperature. The ON-current of TFT is degraded to as low as 0.3 times of the initial value after 1000 s stress. On the other hand, both the sub-threshold swing and threshold voltage kept well during the AC stress. The current crowding effect was rapidly increased with increasing of stress duration. However, comparing the initial and degraded characteristics at rising temperature, namely, 150 deg. C, the ON-current of TFT only decrease to 75% of the initial value after 1000 s AC stress. It depicts that creation of effective trap density in tail-states of poly-Si film is responsible for the electrical degradation of poly-Si TFT. At high temperature, electron has enough energy to pass the energy barrier created by ac stress and the degradation is less obvious.