High-performance poly-Si nanowire NMOS transistors

A novel field-effect transistor with Si nanowire (NW) channels is developed and characterized. To enhance the film crystallinity, metal-induced lateral crystallization (MILC) and/or rapid thermal annealing (RTA) techniques are adopted in the fabrication. In the implementation of MILC process, it is shown that the arrangement of seeding window plays an important role in affecting the resulting film structure. In this regard, asymmetric window arrangement, i.e., with the window locating on only one of the two channel sides is preferred. When MILC and RTA techniques are combined, it is found that single-crystal-like NWs are achieved, leading to significant performance improvement as compared with the control with channels made up of fine-grain structures by the conventional solid-phase, crystallized (SPC) approach. Field-effect mobility up to 550 cm(2)/V-s is recorded in this study.