Relation between hot-carrier light emission and kink effect inpoly-Si thin film transistors

摘要

The kink effect in poly-Si TFTs (thin-film transistors) isevaluated by using a novel method based on kink current and hot carrierlight emission measurements. It is revealed by examining the influenceof the hydrogenation treatment on the kink current and measuring thetemperature dependence of the kink current that the kink effect issignificantly influenced by the grain boundary traps. Furthermore, it isfound from the hot carrier light emission measurement that the energydistribution of hot carriers is not described by the Maxwell-Boltzmanndistribution. The comparison between the kink current and the emittedlight intensity suggests that both kink current and light emissionbasically originated from the hot carriers although the kink currentcharacteristics are not always completely correlated with the lightemission properties