Properties of nano-crystalline silicon thin film fabricated by electron beam exposure

¹ Department of Information Display and Advanced Display Research Center, Kyung Hee University, Dongdaemoon-ku, Seoul 130-701, Korea
² Department of Optometry, Kangwon National University, Samcheok, Gangwondo 245-907, Korea

^a e-mail: kyupark@khu.ac.kr

Received: 30 March 2013
Revised: 22 July 2013
Accepted: 24 July 2013
Published online: 27 August 2013

Abstract

The crystallization of amorphous silicon thin films by electron beam exposure was studied. Amorphous silicon and silicon dioxide layers were deposited on glass substrate by PECVD at 360 °C. The optimization to crystallize 300 nm thick amorphous silicon film was carried out at a RF power of 300 W, DC voltage of 1500 V, Argon gas flow rate of 3 sccm and a distance between electron beam mesh and sample of 40 mm. High quality nano-crystalline silicon films with an activation energy of 0.47 eV from conductivity, a grain size of 15–45 nm from SEM and Raman crystalline volume fraction of 93.1% were fabricated. We expect that e-beam exposure will be applied to crystallization of amorphous silicon films.