High performance nickel-induced lateral crystallization (NILC) polycrystalline silicon (poly-Si) nanowire (NW) thin-film transistors (TFTs) were fabricated. The phosphorous-doped amorphous silicon (alpha-Si)/chem-SiO2 films were employed as Ni-gettering layers to investigate effect of Ni residues on the performance and the uniformity of NILC poly-Si NW TFTs. It was found that the performance and the uniformity of NW TFTs were greatly improved after Ni-gettering process. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.