In Joule-heating induced crystallization, phase transformation can occur through solid-to-solid or liquid-to-solid phases, according to the input conditions of the pulsed power. It was observed that during a Joule-heating period of several tens of microseconds, randomly nucleated liquid seeds followed by rapid solidification in an amorphous matrix play an important role, especially for liquid-to-solid transformation. Meanwhile, under high-power input processing conditions, supergrains of greater than 5 μm in size were produced by lateral growth from the initial seeds without artificial control.

Large area crystallization of amorphous silicon thin-films on glass substrates is one of key technologies in manufacturing flat displays. Among various crystallization technologies, the Joule induced crystallization (JIC) is considered as the highly promising one in the OLED fabrication industries, since the amorphous silicon films on the glass can be crystallized within tens of microseconds, minimizing the thermally and structurally harmful influence on the glass. In the JIC process the metallic layers can be utilized to heat up the amorphous silicon thin films beyond the melting temperatures of silicon and can be fabricated as electrodes in OLED devices during the subsequent processes. This numerical study investigates the heating mechanisms during the JIC process and estimates the deformation of the glass substrate. Based on the thermal analysis, we can understand the temporal and spatial temperature fields of the backplane and its warping phenomena.그리스문자 (