High-efficiency crystallization of amorphous silicon films on glass substrate by new metal-mediated mechanism

A new crystallization technique for crystallizing amorphous silicon (a-Si) film with a low thermal budget is proposed. A highly crystalline polycrystalline silicon (poly-Si) film can be rapidly obtained on a low-cost glass substrate by this technique. A material with a large IR absorption coefficient provides energy for crystallizing a-Si film into poly-Si film. By this new technique, we can make highly crystalline poly-Si film efficiently. Atomic force microscopy (AFM), Raman scattering, X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), and transmission electron microscopy (TEM) with energy dispersive spectrometer (EDS) measurements demonstrated that a-Si film can be fully crystallized by annealing with five 5 s pulses at 870 degrees C. The roughness of film processed by this new technique is only 0.59 nm which is superior to the 7.8 nm obtained by the conventional excimer laser crystallization (ELC) technique. The average grain size and grain growth rate obtained in this technique are 0.82 mu m and 120 mu m/min, respectively.