Stress as a governing parameter to control the crystallization of amorphous silicon films by thermal annealing

Abstract

We have fabricated nanocrystalline dots by thermal annealing (TA) of thermal chemical-vapor-deposited amorphous silicon (a-Si:H) films. In S. Hazra, I. Sakata, M. Yamanaka, and E. Suzuki, Appl. Phys. Lett. 80, 1159 (2002), we observed that ultrathin a-Si:H films (2–10 nm) are stressed because of the presence of deformed crystallites or paracrystallites. With the increase of thickness, volume fraction of paracrystallites decreased in the films and stress in the films gradually reduced. Therefore, by changing the thickness, we can control the stress in the a-Si:H films and thereby the dimensions (in the range of 5 to 10 nm) as well as volume fractions of nanocrystallites formed by TA. On the other hand, it has been found that relaxed a-Si:H networks form polycrystalline films by TA.