The minority carrier properties of shaped—beam laser-recrystallized polysilicon films have been studied, leading to the successful fabrication of vertical bipolar transistors in these films and to the demonstration of a novel three—dimensional mergedvertical bipolar—MOS device. Experiments with lateral transistors established a minority carrier diffusion length of 4 μm in p—type recrystallized films. Vertical bipolar npn transistors with a base—width of 0.2 μm were fabricated in 0.75–μm—thick films using a polysilicon emitter technology. The strong dependence of the gain of the transistors on hydrogen annealing steps is described. With an Ar:H plasma anneal to decrease base—emitter space—charge region recombination, a common—emitter current gain of 100 was possible. The bipolar transistor technology was then used to develop a 3—D fourterminal merged verticalbipolar—MOS device in a recrystallized film. It consists of the three terminals of a bipolar transistor plus a fourth underlying terminal which serves to switch the collector current on or off. A simple model for the device is presented.