Inverter made of complementary p and n channel transistors using a single directly deposited microcrystalline silicon film

We report a p channel thin-film transistor (TFT) made of directly deposited microcrystalline silicon (μc-Si). By integrating this p TFT with its n channel counterpart on a single μc-Si film, we fabricated a complementary metal-silicon oxide-silicon (CMOS) inverter of deposited μc-Si. The μc-Si channel material was grown at 320 °C by plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition in a process similar to the deposition of hydrogenated amorphous silicon. The highest postdeposition TFT process temperature was 280 °C. The low-temperature p channel μc-Si TFT and the integrated CMOS inverter represent building blocks of a digital circuit technology based on ultralow-temperature silicon.