Prevention of thin film failures for 5.0-inch TFT arrays on plastic substrates

A 5.0-inch transmissive type plastic TFT arrays were successfully fabricated on a plastic substrate at the resolution of $400{\times}3{\times}300$ lines (100ppi). All of the TFT processes were carried out below $150^{\circ}C$ on PES plastic films. After thin film deposition using PECVD, thin film failures such as film delamination and cracking often occurred. For successful growth of thin films (about 1um) without their failures, it is necessary to solve the critical problem related to the internal compressive stress (some GPa) leading to delamination at a threshold thickness value of the films. The Griffith's theory explains the failure process by looking at the excess of elastic energy inside the film, which overcomes the cohesive energy between film and substrate. To increase the above mentioned threshold thickness value there are two possibilities: (i) the improvement of the interface adhesion (for example, through surface micro-roughening and/or surface activation), and (ii) the reduction of the internal stress. In this work, reducing a-Si layer film thickness and optimizing a barrier SiNx layer have produced stable CVD films at 150oC, over PES substrates