In this work, metal induced crystallization using nickel was employed to obtain polycrystalline silicon by crystallization of amorphous films for thin film transistor applications. The devices were produced through only title lithographic process with a bottom gate configuration using a new gate dielectric consisting of a multi-layer of aluminum oxide titanium oxide produced by atomic layer deposition. The best results were obtained for TFTs with the active layer of poly-Si crystallized for 20 h at 500 degrees C using a nickel layer of 0.5 mu m where the effective mobility is 45.5 cm(2) V-1 s(-1). The threshold voltage, the on off current ratio and the sub-threshold voltage are, respectively, 11.9 V, 5.55x10(4) and 2.49 V/dec. (C) 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.