Growth of monocrystalline silicon islands on insulating substrates

Formation of regularly arranged large grain silicon islands by using embedded micro mirrors in the flash crystallization of amorphous silicon

“…10, 11(a), and 11(b)], but only remarkable smaller residues were noticed in the case of any other mirror pattern. The formation of silicon droplets between regularly arranged silicon islands was observed by Scharff et al 16 in a similar manner. It arises most probably from excessive material during the mass redistribution and pillow formation process.…”

“…Examples are the application of patterned absorbing layers on top or below the a-Si, 12 the use of a local thinner oxide below the a-Si to produce a heat sink, 31 an a-Si film with a locally increased thickness, 31 the structuring of the a-Si itself, 12,32 or a combination of these approaches. The largest silicon grains obtained so far by FLA in a controlled manner were reported by Scharff et al 15,16 They used artificial surface relief structures covered 15 or filled 16 with a-Si to produce silicon islands that are embedded in the surrounding oxide and consist of grains with a size of several tens of micrometers. In the field of crystallization by ELA, the so-called l-Czochralski process 31 is one of the most advanced techniques to produce large silicon grains in a controlled manner.…”

“…Since there is no method to deposit a high quality silicon film directly without exceeding this thermal budget, a film of amorphous silicon (a-Si) has to be deposited at first and crystallized thereafter. Common annealing techniques for that purpose are flash-lamp annealing (FLA) [7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16] and excimerlaser annealing (ELA). [17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32] In these processes, a sample is exposed to a light flash with durations typically in the ms and the ns range for FLA and ELA, respectively.…”