Modeling of grain growth mechanism by nickel silicide reactive grain boundary effect in metal-induced-lateral-crystallization

Abstract

The growth mechanism of metal-induced-lateral-crystallization (MILC) was studied and modeled. Based on the time evolution of the metal impurity in the amorphous silicon film being crystallized, a model has been developed to predict the growth rate and the final metal distribution in the crystallized polysilicon. The model prediction has been compared with experimental results and high prediction accuracy is demonstrated. Using the model, the effects of annealing temperature, annealing time and initial metal concentration on the final grain size and metal impurity distribution can be analyzed. As a result, the model can be used to optimize the grain growth conditions for fabricating high performance thin-film-transistors on the recrystallized polysilicon film.

Structural characterization of nanostructures grown by Ni metal induced lateral crystallization of amorphous-Si

“…In this range, the crystallization is solely affected by Ni-MILC; on the contrary, at higher temperatures, the SPC contribution is significant. 12 Strong anisotropic Ni-MILC growth is observed at the temperature range of 400-450 C. As far as we know, this is the first time where the structural characteristics of the pure Ni-MILC are studied without the involvement of SPC. The crystallization rate is strongly influenced by the distribution of the neighbouring NiSi 2 pads, and this long-range effect is discussed in detail in Section III C. The formation of nickel silicides and the crystallization of a-Si under limited and unlimited Ni supply conditions were also examined by in-situ experiments in TEM.…”

“…The Ni-MILC growth mechanism at first proposed by Hayzelden and Batstone 10 also by Jang et al 11 and Cheng et al 12 can be described as follows. have the form of regular octahedra, bounded by eight {111} faces having 0.4% lattice mismatch with Si.…”

“…The MILC process starts at 400 C; however, most of the MILC experiments presented in the literature were performed at the temperature range of 500 to 650 C. [10][11][12][13] As far as we know, no systematic MILC studies were performed at the temperature range of 400 to 500 C. Only Makihira et al 17 performed experiments in this range, showing the formation of very long needle-like crystallites without the change of their growth direction. Even in this case, the structural characteristics and the mode of growth of these long whiskers were not studied.…”

“…% Ni, which replaces the Si atoms. 12,27 The concentration of crystalline Si is 5 Â 10 22 atoms cm À3 . Therefore, the Ni concentration in the crystallized Si is 8 Â 10 À4 Â 5 Â 10 22 cm…”

Sub-wavelength InAs quantum dot micro-disk lasers epitaxially grown on exact Si (001) substrates

“…The active laser structures were grown on a GaAs-on-V-grooved-Si (GoVS) template 9 that is free of antiphase-domains and absorptive intermediate buffers. Compared to the quantum dot lasers recently demonstrated on offcut silicon using Ge buffers, [10][11][12][13][14] or direct nucleation of GaAs, 15,16 the use of on-axis (001) silicon offers better compatibility with conventional Si CMOS processes. The promising lasing characteristics of the MDLs also suggest a viable route towards large-scale, lowcost integration with passive optical components on a silicon-on-insulator (SOI) platform.…”