저널

Solid phase crystallization (SPC) is a simple method in producing a polycrystalline phase by annealing amorphous silicon (a-Si) in a furnace environment. Main motivation of the crystallization technique is to fabricate low temperature polycrystalline silicon thin film transistors (LTPS-TFTs) on a thermally susceptible glass substrate. Studies on SPC have been naturally focused to the low temperature regime. Recently, fabrication of polycrystalline silicon (poly-Si) TFT circuits from a high temperature polycrystalline silicon process on steel foil substrates was reported. Solid phase crystallization of a-Si films proceeds by nucleation and growth. After nucleation polycrystalline phase is propagated via twin mediated growth mechanism. Elliptically shaped grains, therefore, contain intra-granular defects such as micro-twins. Both the intra-granular and the inter-granular defects reflect the crystallinity of SPC poly-Si. Crystallinity and SPC kinetics of high temperatures were compared to those of low temperatures using Raman analysis newly proposed in this study.

SPC;poly-Si;TFT;Raman spectroscopy;