• Korean Journal of Materials Research
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• v.4 no.8
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• pp.895-905
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• 1994

The solid phase crystallization behavior of undoped amorphous $Si_{1-x}Ge_{x}$ (X=O to 0.53) alloyfilms was studied by X-ray diffractometry(XRD) and transmission electron microscopy(TEM). Thefilms were deposited on thermally oxidized 5" (100) Si wafer by MBE(Mo1ecular Beam Epitaxy) at 300'C and annealed in the temperature range of $500^{\circ}C$ ~ $625^{\circ}C$. From XRD results, it was found that the thermal budget for full crystallization of the film is significantly reduced as the Ge concentration in thefilm is increased. In addition, the results also shows that pure amorphous Si film crystallizes with astrong (111) texture while the $Si_{1-x}Ge_{x}$ alloy film crystallzes with a (311) texture suggesting that the solidphase crystallization mechanism is changed by the incorporation of Ge. TEM analysis of the crystallized filmshow that the grain morphology of the pure Si is an elliptical and/or a dendrite shape with high density ofcrystalline defects in the grains while that of the $Si_{0.47}Ge_{0.53}$ alloy is more or less equiaxed shape with muchlower density of defects. From these results, we conclude that the crystallization mechanism changes fromtwin-assisted growth mode to random growth mode as the Ge cocentration is increased.ocentration is increased.