Polycrystalline silicon thin-film CMOS technology: the poor man's SOI

The authors discuss the electrical characteristics of thin film polycrystalline silicon transistors and their various uses. The first major application of polysilicon transistors was in the fabrication of active matrix liquid crystal displays. Over 40000 devices are fabricated on a four inch glass wafer and are used to make write only dynamic memory type full wafer arrays. The second major application of polysilicon transistors is as a replacement for the polysilicon load resistor in static memories. Future applications include circuits where both bulk silicon transistors and low performance silicon-on-insulator polysilicon transistors are used in the same integrated circuit. Typical of these applications are arrays where different substrate biases are needed and where junction isolation is insufficient for the application.<>