Advanced Solid-Phase Crystallization of Amorphous Silicon on a Glass Substrate

Abstract

Advanced Solid-Phase Crystallization of Amorphous Silicon on a Glass Substrate Thanh Nga Nguyen and Sungwook Jung School of Information and Communication Engineering, Sungkyunkwan University, Suwon 440-746 Junsin Yi School of Information and Communication Engineering and Department of Energy Science, Sungkyunkwan Unversity, Suwon 440-746 (Received 22 September 2008) We report the crystallization of an amorphous silicon (a-Si) lm by using advanced solid-phase crystallization (a-SPC). Solid-phase crystallization (SPC) is the most common method to obtain polycrystalline silicon (poly-Si). However, SPC requires a long annealing time to change from the a-Si phase to the poly-Si phase. The a-SPC method, which employs a high annealing temperature (above 700 C) but a short annealing time, is investigated to overcome this disadvantage. After dehydrogenating at 450 C for 2 hours, the a-Si lms on Corning EAGLE glass substrates are annealed by rapid thermal processing (RTP). The UV-Vis spectrum reveals that the poly-Si appears for heat-treatment at 750 C for 3 seconds. When the annealing time is increased until the critical point, at which the glass substrate bends, the crystalline fraction, as well as the quality of the poly-Si layer, improves. Raman spectroscopy con rms these results. The highest crystalline fraction is 96 % for an annealing time of 5 minutes. PACS numbers: 78.66.Jg