New Solid-phase Crystallization of Amorphous Silicon by Selective Area Heating

A new crystallization method for amorphous silicon, called selective area heating (SAH), was proposed. The purpose of SAH is to improve the reliability of amorphous silicon films with extremely low thermal budgets to the glass substrate. The crystallization time shortened from that of the conventional solid-phase crystallization method. An isolated thin heater for SAH was fabricated on a quartz substrate with a Pt layer. To investigate the crystalline properties, Raman scattering spectra were used. The crystalline transverse optic phonon peak was at about 519 $cm^{-1}$, which shows that the films were crystallized. The effect of the crystallization time on the varying thickness of the $SiO_2$ films was investigated. The crystallization area in the 400nm-thick $SiO_2$ film was larger than those of the $SiO_2$ films with other thicknesses after SAH at 16 W for 2 min. The results show that a $SiO_2$ capping layer acts as storage layer for thermal energy. SAH is thus suggested as a new crystallization method for large-area electronic device applications.