A study is made of the crystallization of amorphous antimony film deposited on a glass substrate. The substrate is maintained at a desired temperature between 20°C and 90°C. The crystal growth in the films of thickness 210-550 Å is directly observed through an optical microscope. At any substrate temperature Ts the rate of crystal growth v is found to change with the thickness d in accordance with the expression v=v∞(1-dc/d), where dc is the critical thickness for crystallization of the amorphous antimony film and v∞ the rate of crystal growth for bulk antimony. The critical thickness dc decreases with the rise of Ts. The activation energy of atoms for crystallization Q is found to be 0.32 eV for bulk antimony.
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