This paper investigates the characteristics of high performance lateral polysilicon diodes. Low leakage currents and high ON currents were achieved using a gated PIN diode structure. An independent control gate terminal was placed over the intrinsic region of the diodes to improve the properties of the polysilicon diodes. The addition of the control gate was found to improve both the ON resistance and the leakage current by an order of magnitude. The gated PIN diodes had leakage currents less than 0.05 pA mu m(-1) width at 5 V of reverse bias, and ON resistance less than 1 M Omega mu m(-1) width for an intrinsic region length of 2 mu m. A gated PIN diode model is presented that models the diode as an ideal diode in series with a thin film transistor. This model is used to explain the impact of the control gate on the ON resistance and the leakage current of the gated PIN lateral polysilicon diodes.