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Source-gated transistors (SGTs) have potentially very high output impedance and low saturation voltages, which make them ideal as building blocks for high performance analog circuits fabricated in thin-film technologies. The quality of the saturation is greatly influenced by the design of the field-relief structure incorporated into the source electrode. Starting from measurements on self-aligned polysilicon structures, we show through numerical simulations how the field plate design can be improved. A simple source field plate around 1μm long situated several tens of nm above the semiconductor can increase the low-voltage intrinsic gain by more than two orders of magnitude and offers adequate tolerance to process variations in a moderately scaled thin-film SGT.

Integrated, flat-panel lighting systems require high efficiency linear drivers which are stable under electrical stress and candeliver uniform performance across a large area. Owing to their lowsaturation voltage and flat saturation characteristic, source-gatedtransistors (SGTs) are ideally suited to act as power-efficient driving transistors in active matrix backplanes for lighting, low-powersignage and display screens. It is shown that SGTs are also very stable during electrical stress. The technology is compatible with standard TFT fabrication allowing FET and SGT devices to be integratedin the same design and fabrication run.