• Journal of the Korean institute of surface engineering
• /
• v.41 no.2
• /
• pp.48-50
• /
• 2008

Solid phase crystallization (SPC) of amorphous silicon is usually conducted at around $600^{\circ}C$ since it is used in the application of flat panel display using thermally susceptible glass substrate. In this study we conducted SPC experiments at temperatures higher than $600^{\circ}C$ using silicon wafers. Crystallization rate becomes dramatically rapid at higher temperatures since SPC kinetics is controlled by nucleation with high value of activation energy. We report SPC kinetics of high temperatures compared to that of low temperatures.

• Journal of Information Display
• /
• v.10 no.3
• /
• pp.117-120
• /
• 2009

A new crystallization method for amorphous silicon, called selective area heating (SAH), was proposed. The purpose of SAH is to improve the reliability of amorphous silicon films with extremely low thermal budgets to the glass substrate. The crystallization time shortened from that of the conventional solid-phase crystallization method. An isolated thin heater for SAH was fabricated on a quartz substrate with a Pt layer. To investigate the crystalline properties, Raman scattering spectra were used. The crystalline transverse optic phonon peak was at about 519 $cm^{-1}$, which shows that the films were crystallized. The effect of the crystallization time on the varying thickness of the $SiO_2$ films was investigated. The crystallization area in the 400nm-thick $SiO_2$ film was larger than those of the $SiO_2$ films with other thicknesses after SAH at 16 W for 2 min. The results show that a $SiO_2$ capping layer acts as storage layer for thermal energy. SAH is thus suggested as a new crystallization method for large-area electronic device applications.

• Journal of the Korean Ceramic Society
• /
• v.43 no.4 s.287
• /
• pp.230-234
• /
• 2006

Metal-Induced Crystallization (MIC) of amorphous silicon (a-Si) using aluminum and nickel as catalysts were performed with a variation of metal thickness and temperature. Raman results showed that the crystallization of a-Si depended on the thickness of aluminum while not on nickel. Nickel that forms silicide nodules during annealing simply catalyzed the formation of crystalline silicon (c-Si) while aluminum was consumed and transferred during MIC, which resulted in more complex microstructural characteristics. Crystalline silicons after NIC had elongated shape with a twin along the long axis. Morphological change after Aluminum-Induced Crystallization (AIC) showed more equiaxial grains. The nucleation and growth mechanism of AIC was discussed.

• Journal of the Korean Crystal Growth and Crystal Technology
• /
• v.29 no.2
• /
• pp.50-53
• /
• 2019

In this study, polycrystalline silicon thin film useful for the solar cells was fabricated by AIC(Aluminum Induced Crystallization) process. A diffusing barrier for this process is prepared with $Al_2O_3$. For the maximization of the grain size of the polycrystalline silicon, a selective blasting of the $Al_2O_3$ diffusing barrier was conducted before annealing treatment. The heat treatment for the activation of the amorphous-Si (a-Si) layer was carried out with Rapid Thermal Annealing (RTA) process. Crystallization of the a-Si layer was analyzed with XRD. It was confirmed that a-Si was crystallized at $500^{\circ}C$ and the silicon crystal is observed to be formed and the grain size of the polycrystalline silicon was observed to be $15.9{\mu}m$.

• Journal of the Korean Crystal Growth and Crystal Technology
• /
• v.11 no.4
• /
• pp.160-165
• /
• 2001

The effects of various metals on Field Aided Lateral Crystallization (FALC) behaviors of amorphous silicon (a-Si) were investigated. Under an influence of electric field, metals such s Cu, Ni and Co were found to fasten the lateral crystallization toward a metal-free region, exhibiting a typical FALC behavior while the lateral crystallization of a-Si was not obvious for Pd. However, Au, Al and Cr did not induce the lateral crystallization of a-Si in metal-free region. Such phenomenological differences in various metals were studied in terms of dominant diffusing species (DDS) in the reaction between metal and Si. It was judged that the applied electric field enhanced the crystallization velocity by accelerating the diffusion of metal atoms since the occurrence of lateral crystallization would be strongly dependent on the diffusion of metal atoms than that of Si atoms. Therefore, it was concluded that he only metal-dominant diffusing species in the reaction between metal and Si results in the crystallization of a-Si in metal-free region.

• Journal of Korean Vacuum Science & Technology
• /
• v.2 no.1
• /
• pp.49-54
• /
• 1998

The effect of deposition paratmeters on the solid-phase crystallization of amorphous silicon films deposited by plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition has been investigated by x-ray diffraction. The amorphous silicon films were prepared on Si(100) wafers using SiH4 gas with and without H2 dilution at the substrate temperatures between 12$^{\circ}C$ and 38$0^{\circ}C$. The R. F. powers and the deposition pressures were also varied. After crystallizing at $600^{\circ}C$ for 24h, the films exhibited (111), (220), and (311) x-ray diffraction peaks. The (111) peak intensity increased as the substrate temperature decreased, and the H dilution suppressed the crystallization. Increasing R.F. powers within the limits of etching level and increasing deposition pressures also have enhanced the peak intensity. The peak intensity was closely related to the deposition rate, which may be an indirect indicator of structural disorder in amorphous silicon films. Our results are consistent with the fact that an increase of the structural disorder I amorphous silicon films enhances the grain size in the crystallized films.

• Journal of the Korean Crystal Growth and Crystal Technology
• /
• v.8 no.2
• /
• pp.299-306
• /
• 1998

Crystallization of the amorphous silicon needs activation. Thermal energy through laser annealing, furnace annealing and rapid thermal process (RTP) has been convinced to crystallize the amorphous silicon thin film. It is expected that some other type of energy like mechanical energy can help to crystallize the amorphous silicon thin film. In this study, mechanical energy through wet blasting of silica slurry and silicon ion implantation has been applied to the amorphous silicon thin film deposited with LPCVD technique. RTP was employed for the annealing of this mechanically-damaged amorphous silicon thin film. For the characterization of the crystallized silicon thin film, XRD and Raman analysis were conducted. In this study, it is shown that the mechanical damage is effective to enhance the crystallization of amorphous silicon thin film.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers
• /
• v.21 no.1
• /
• pp.1-4
• /
• 2008

The electrical characteristics of polycrystalline silicon (poly-Si) thin film transistor (TFT) crystallized by excimer laser annealing (ELA) method were evaluated, The polycrystalline silicon thin-film transistor (poly-Si TFT) has higher electric field-effect-mobility and larger drivability than the amorphous silicon TFT. However, to poly-Si TFT's using conventional processes, the temperature must be very high. For this reason, an amorphous silicon film on a buried oxide was crystallized by annealing with a KrF excimer laser (248 nm)to fabricate a poly-Si film at low temperature. Then, High permittivity $HfO_2$ of 20 nm as the gate-insulator was deposited by atomic layer deposition (ALD) to low temperature process. In addition, the solid phase crystallization (SPC) was compared to the ELA method as a crystallization technique of amorphous-silicon film. As a result, the crystallinity and surface roughness of poly-Si crystallized by ELA method was superior to the SPC method. Also, we obtained excellent device characteristics from the Poly-Si TFT fabricated by the ELA crystallization method.

• Journal of the Korean institute of surface engineering
• /
• v.43 no.1
• /
• pp.7-11
• /
• 2010

Solid phase crystallization (SPC) is a simple method in producing a polycrystalline phase by annealing amorphous silicon (a-Si) in a furnace environment. Main motivation of the crystallization technique is to fabricate low temperature polycrystalline silicon thin film transistors (LTPS-TFTs) on a thermally susceptible glass substrate. Studies on SPC have been naturally focused to the low temperature regime. Recently, fabrication of polycrystalline silicon (poly-Si) TFT circuits from a high temperature polycrystalline silicon process on steel foil substrates was reported. Solid phase crystallization of a-Si films proceeds by nucleation and growth. After nucleation polycrystalline phase is propagated via twin mediated growth mechanism. Elliptically shaped grains, therefore, contain intra-granular defects such as micro-twins. Both the intra-granular and the inter-granular defects reflect the crystallinity of SPC poly-Si. Crystallinity and SPC kinetics of high temperatures were compared to those of low temperatures using Raman analysis newly proposed in this study.

• 한국정보디스플레이학회:학술대회논문집
• /
• 2002.08a
• /
• pp.548-551
• /
• 2002

The crystallization of amorphous silicon (a-Si) was achieved using a field aided lateral crystallization (FALC) process at 350 $^{\circ}C$. Under the influence of an electric field, Cu is found to drastically enhance the lateral crystallization velocity of a-Si. When an electric field was applied to the selectively Cu-deposited a-Si film during the heat treatment at temperature as low as 350 $^{\circ}C$, dendrite-shaped crystallization of a-Si progressed toward Cu-free region and the crystallization from negative electrode side toward positive electrode side was accelerated. We identified that 1000${\AA}$ thick a-Si film was completely crystallized by Cu-FALC process at 350 $^{\circ}C$ by TEM analysis.