The a-St: H TFT with thin active layer structure is studied in this paper. The experimental results show that the characteristics of a-Si: H TFT vary when the a-Si: H thickness is smaller than some critical value. The effects of the space charge in the active layer rear surface on the a-Si: H TFT characteristics are discussed in detail. The dependence of the threshold voltage on the active layer thickness is calculated with the effective surface space charge layer model
and the critical active layer thickness is 130nm
which is baSically consistent with experiment results.