Modeling and experimental analysis in excimer-laser crystallization of amorphous Si films on a glass substrate with different buffer layers

In this work, the excimer-laser-induced crystallization of amorphous silicon (a-Si) films was investigated numerically and experimentally. The basic structure is an a-Si film on a glass substrate. The control parameters are the laser intensity and the pulse number. The effects of SiO2 and Si3N4 layers located between the Si film and glass substrate were also studied. In the microstructure analysis of the laser-irradiated area, the critical fluences (full-melt threshold, FMT) between the partial melting and complete melting regimes can be found by applying scanning electron microscopy. An efficient two-dimensional numerical model is carried out to predict the critical fluences (FMT) and the transient temperature distribution during the laser processing. From the analysis of temperature responses, the FMT obtained from the simulation results of the proposed model agree fairly well with those from the experimental data reported in the literature and acquired in this research.