Patent ID: 8076187

Claim:
A method of fabricating a thin film transistor (TFT), the method comprising: forming amorphous silicon on a substrate; dividing the amorphous silicon on the substrate into rectangular silicon regions including a first silicon region, each of the silicon regions having a first width and a first length; radiating a laser beam on the amorphous silicon; crystallizing the amorphous silicon using a mask pattern, comprising crystallizing the first silicon region by radiating the laser beam through the mask pattern for a plurality of N laser shots on the amorphous silicon, N being greater than or equal to 3, the mask pattern comprising a corresponding N contiguous laser shot regions each having the first width and the first length, each of the laser shot regions for serving as a mask while radiating the laser beam onto the first silicon region during a respective one of the laser shots, the mask pattern moving width-wise by the first width or length-wise by the first length with respect to the substrate between consecutive ones of the laser shots, each of the laser shot regions having one or more transparent portions and zero or more non-transparent portions, no two of the laser shot regions having a same total area of respective said one or more transparent portions, the crystallizing of the first silicon region yielding a plurality of regions comprising N radiated regions, each of the radiated regions being subjected to a different number of the laser shots from 1 to N; and forming a semiconductor layer having a source region, a drain region, and a channel region.