Integration and characterization of amorphous silicon thin-film transistor and Mo-tips for active-matrix cathodes

We have designed and monolithically integrated amorphous silicon thin-film transistor (a-Si TFT) with Mo-tip field emitter arrays (FEAs) on glass substrate for active-matrix cathodes (AMCs) in field-emission display (FED) application. In our AMCs, a light shield layer of metal was introduced to reduce the photo leakage and back channel currents of a-Si TFT. The light shield was designed to have the role of focusing grid to focus emitted electron beams from the AMC on the corresponding anode pixel by forming it around the Mo-tip FEAs as well as above the a-Si TFT. The thin film depositions in a-Si TFTs were performed at a high temperature of above 360°C to guarantee the postvacuum packaging process of cathode and anode plates in FED. Also, a novel wet etching process was developed for n ⁺-doped-a-Si etching with high etch selectivity to intrinsic a-Si and good etch controllability and was used in the fabrication of inverted stagger TFT with a very thin active layer. The developed a-Si TFTs had good enough performance to be used as control devices for AMCs with Mo-tip emitters. The fabricated AMCs exhibited very effective aging process for field emitters with the limitation of emission currents by the a-Si TFT and thus, we could successfully activate Mo-tips to emit electrons without any tip-failure. The field-emission currents of the fabricated AMCs were well controlled by the gate bias of a-Si TFTs, showing the possibility of low-voltage matrix addressing and good stability and reliability of field emission.