Polycrystalline Si films with unique microstructures formed from amorphous Si films by non-thermal equilibrium flash lamp annealing

概要

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Flash lamp annealing (FLA), with millisecond-order duration, can crystallize amorphous silicon (a-Si) films a few m thick on glass substrates, resulting in formation of polycrystalline Si (poly-Si) films with unprecedented periodic microstructures. The characteristic microstructure, formed spontaneously during crystallization, consists of large-grain regions, containing relatively large grains more than 100 nm in size, and fine-grain regions, including only 10-nm-sized fine grains. The microstructures results from explosive crystallization (EC), driven by heat generation corresponding to the difference of the enthalpies of meta-stable a-Si and stable crystalline Si (c-Si) states, which realizes lateral crystallization velocity on the order of m/s. The lateral crystallization may stop when the temperature of a-Si in the vicinity of c-Si, which is decided by both homogeneous heating from flash irradiation and thermal diffusion from c-Si, falls below a crystallization temperature. This idea is supported by the experimental fact that a lateral crystallization length decreases with decreasing pulse duration.