High-Quality Polycrystalline Silicon Films with Minority Carrier Lifetimes over 5 µs Formed by Flash Lamp Annealing of Precursor Amorphous Silicon Films Prepared by Catalytic Chemical Vapor Deposition

Abstract

Current interatomic potentials for compound semiconductors, such as GaAs, fail to correctly predict the ab initio calculated and experimentally observed surface reconstructions. These potentials do not address the electron occupancies of dangling bonds associated with surface atoms and their well established role in the formation of low-energy surfaces. The electron counting rule helps account for the electron distribution among covalent and dangling bonds, which, when applied to GaAs surfaces, requires the arsenic dangling bonds to be fully occupied and the gallium dangling bonds to be empty. A simple method for linking this electron counting constraint with interatomic potentials is proposed and used to investigate energetics of the atomic scale structures of the GaAs(001) surface using molecular statics methods.

Precursor Cat-CVD a-Si films for the formation of high-quality poly-Si films on glass substrates by flash lamp annealing

“…Precursor a-Si films with a hydrogen content of about 3% were deposited by Cat-CVD using deposition conditions described previously [11]. Films that were dehydrogenated were heated at 500°C under a nitrogen atmosphere for 12 h, resulting in a film hydrogen content less than 1%.…”

“…From absorption coefficient arguments, thicker a-Si films absorb more flash lamp light, resulting in more heat generation, while the heat diffusion from the a-Si is rather small for the thicker aSi films due to the difference in thermal diffusion lengths between the a-Si and the quartz. A more detailed description can be found in our previous paper [11].…”

Variation of crystallization mechanisms in flash-lamp-irradiated amorphous silicon films

“…The Cat-CVD can produce a-Si films with low stress and low hydrogen content of approximately 3 at%, and thus, is suitable as a method of depositing thick a-Si films capable of being crystallized without hydrogen bubbling. Detailed deposition conditions of a-Si films have been summarized elsewhere [17]. Only one shot of flash lamp light, with a broad spectrum mainly in the visible range [11], was irradiated for each sample.…”

Polycrystalline Si films with unique microstructures formed from amorphous Si films by non‐thermal equilibrium flash lamp annealing

“…The Cat-CVD, often referred to as hot-wire CVD, can form a-Si films a few µm thick easily, unlike conventional plasma-enhanced CVD (PECVD), because of their low film stress. The detailed deposition conditions are summarized elsewhere [11]. Figure 1 shows the schematic diagram of a FLA system.…”