The effect of the film H content on the crystallization of laser processed and thermally annealed HWCVD a‐Si:H

Abstract

We demonstrate the use of laser processing to affect the nucleation of crystallites in thermally annealed HWCVD a‐Si:H thin films. The influence of film H content is investigated by XRD measurements during in situ 600 °C thermal anneal on both as grown films and on films that have been laser irradiated. All laser irradiated films show a reduced incubation time (τo) for crystallization compared to as‐grown films, with the largest differences exhibited for samples with higher film H. We show that a recently developed model for a nucleation center in a‐Si:H can be used to explain how the film H content affects this change in τo and also predict the magnitude of this change with laser processing (© 2010 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)