• Journal of Information Display
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• v.10 no.2
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• pp.76-79
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• 2009

In Joule-heating-induced crystallization, solid-to-solid or liquid-to-solid phase transformation could occur. It was found that novel physical phenomena that randomly nucleated liquid seeds, followed by rapid solidification in an amorphous matrix, during the Joule-heating-up period play an important role especially in liquid-to-solid transformation. Under some processing conditions, super-grains sized 6-8 ${\um}m$ were produced by the lateral growth from the initial seeds, without any artificially control.

• The Transactions of the Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers C
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• v.51 no.6
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• pp.229-235
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• 2002

This paper presents the fabrication of polycrystalline thin film transistor(TFT) using sequential lateral solidification(SLS) of amorphous silicon. The fabricated SLS TFT showed high Performance suitable for active matrix liquid crystal display(AMLCD). The SLS process involves (1) a complete melting of selected area via irradiation through a patterned mask, and (2) a precisely controlled pulse translation of the sample with respect to the mask over a distance shorter than the super lateral growth(SLG) distance so that lateral growth extended over a number of iterative steps. The SLS experiment was performed with 550$\AA$ a-Si using 308nm XeCl laser having $2\mu\textrm{m}$ width. Irradiated laser energy density is 310mJ/$\textrm{cm}^2$ and pulse duration time was 25ns. The translation distance was 0.6$\mu$m/pulse, 0.8$\mu$m/pulse respectively. As a result, a directly solidified grain was obtained. Thin film transistors (TFTs) were fabricated on the poly-Si film made by SLS process. The characteristics of fabricated SLS p -type poly-Si TFT device with 2$\mu\textrm{m}$ channel width and 2$\mu\textrm{m}$ channel length showed the mobility of 115.5$\textrm{cm}^2$/V.s, the threshold voltage of -1.78V, subthreshold slope of 0.29V/dec, $I_{off}$ current of 7$\times$10$^{-l4}$A at $V_{DS}$ =-0.1V and $I_{on}$ / $I_{off}$ ratio of 2.4$\times$10$^{7}$ at $V_{DS}$ =-0.1V. As a result, SLS TFT showed superior characteristics to conventional poly-Si TFTs with identical geometry.y.y.y.

• Laser Solutions
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• v.6 no.2
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• pp.9-17
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• 2003

Due to the heat confinement in the shallow region of the target for a short time scale, pulsed laser annealing has received an increasing interest for the fabrication of poly-Si thin film transistors(TFTs) on glass as a low cost substrate in the flat panel displays. The formation and growth mechanisms of poly silicon(poly-Si) grains in thin films are investigated using an excimer laser crystallization system. To understand the crystallization mechanism, the grain formations are observed by FESEM photography. The optical reflectance and transmittance during the crystallization process are measured using HeNe laser optics. A two-step ELC(Excimer Laser Crystallization) process is applied to enhance the grain formation uniformity.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers Conference
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• 2007.06a
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• pp.375-375
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• 2007

In the conventional crystallization method, thepoly-Si TFTs show poor device-to-device uniformity because of the random location of the grain boundaries. However, our new crystallization method introduced in this paper employed substrate-embedded seeds on the highly ordered anodic alumina template to control both the location of seeds and the number of grain boundaries intentionally. In the process of excimer laser crystallization (ELC), a-Si film deposited on the anodic alumina by low pressure chemical vapor deposition (LPCVD) is transformed into fine poly-Si grains by explosive crystallization (XC) prior to primary melting. At the higher energy density, the film is nearly completely melted and laterally grown by super lateral growth (SLG) from remained small part of the fine poly-Si grains as seeds at the Si/anodic alumina interface. Resultant grain boundaries have almost linear functions of the number of seeds in concavities of anodic alumina which have a constant spacing. It reveals the uniformity of. device can be enhanced prominently by controlling location and size of pores which contains fine poly~Si seeds under artificial anodizing condition.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers Conference
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• 2007.11a
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• pp.396-396
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• 2007

Highly ordered pore structures as a template for formation of seeds have been prepared by the self-organization process of aluminum oxidation. The a-Si films were deposited on the anodic alumina films and crystallized by laser irradiation. It was found that un-melted part of fine poly-Si grain formed by explosive crystallization (EX) lead super lateral growth(SLG) and occluded with neighbor grains. The crystallized grains along the distribution of seeds were obtained. This results show a great potential for use in novel crystallization for decently uniform polycrystalline Si thin film transistors (poly-Si TFTs).