Effect of surface morphology on laser-induced crystallization of amorphous silicon thin films

Abstract

The effect of surface morphology on laser-induced crystallization of hydrogenated intrinsic amorphous silicon (a-Si:H) thin films deposited by PECVD is studied in this paper. The thin films are irritated by a frequency-doubled (λ=532 nm) Nd:YAG pulsed nanosecond laser. An effective melting model is built to identify the variation of melting regime influenced by laser crystallization. Based on the experimental results, the established correlation between the grain growth characterized by AFM and the crystalline fraction (Xc) obtained from Raman spectroscopy suggests that the crystallized process form amorphous phase to polycrystalline phase. Therefore, the highest crystalline fraction (Xc) is obtained by a optimized laser energy density.