Fabrication of Polycrystalline Si Films by Silicide-Enhanced Rapid Thermal Annealing and Their Application to Thin Film Transistors

Amorphous (a-Si) films were epitaxially crystallized on a very thin large-grained poly-Si seed layer by a silicide-enhanced rapid thermal annealing (SERTA) process. The poly-Si seed layer contained a small amount of nickel silicide which can enhance crystallization of the upper layer of the a-Si film at lower temperature. A 5-nm thick poly-Si seed layer was then prepared by the crystallization of an a-Si film using the vapor-induced crystallization process in a $NiCl_2$ environment. After removing surface oxide on the seed layer, a 45-nm thick a-Si film was deposited on the poly-Si seed layer by hot-wire chemical vapor deposition at $200^{\circ}C$. The epitaxial crystallization of the top a-Si layer was performed by the rapid thermal annealing (RTA) process at $730^{\circ}C$ for 5 min in Ar as an ambient atmosphere. Considering the needle-like grains as well as the crystallization temperature of the top layer as produced by the SERTA process, it was thought that the top a-Si layer was epitaxially crystallized with the help of $NiSi_2$ precipitates that originated from the poly-Si seed layer. The crystallinity of the SERTA processed poly-Si thin films was better than the other crystallization process, due to the high-temperature RTA process. The Ni concentration in the poly-Si film fabricated by the SERTA process was reduced to $1{\times}10^{18}cm^{-3}$. The maximum field-effect mobility and substrate swing of the p-channel poly-Si thin-film transistors (TFTs) using the poly-Si film prepared by the SERTA process were $85cm^2/V{\cdot}s$ and 1.23 V/decade at $V_{ds}=-3V$, respectively. The off current was little increased under reverse bias from $1.0{\times}10^{-11}$ A. Our results showed that the SERTA process is a promising technology for high quality poly-Si film, which enables the fabrication of high mobility TFTs. In addition, it is expected that poly-Si TFTs with low leakage current can be fabricated with more precise experiments.

Silicide-Enhanced Rapid Thermal Annealing을 이용한 다결정 Si 박막의 제조 및 다결정 Si 박막 트랜지스터에의 응용