Y. Wada et al., NUCLEATION AND CRYSTALLIZATION CHARACTERISTICS OF PHOSPHORUS-DOPED AMORPHOUS-SILICON SLIT NANO-WIRE, Journal of the Electrochemical Society, 141(5), 1994, pp. 1392-1397
Nucleation and crystallization characteristics of phosphorus-doped amo
rphous silicon (a-Si) ''slit nano wire'' are studied, which is fabrica
ted by conformal filling of a 100 nm wide trench by HLD (High temperat
ure Low pressure chemical vapor Deposition) oxide, and measures about
10 nm in width and height. Nucleation rate and crystallization rate of
the amorphous silicon layer, with a phosphorus doping concentration o
f 1 x 10(20) cm-3 are measured for samples annealed between 525 and 56
0-degrees-C between 3 and 120 h. The number of nuclei and the length o
f grains are observed by transmission electron microscopy with a magni
fication between 32,000 and 4,000,000. The activation energies of nucl
eation and crystallization are 1.15 and 1.53 eV, respectively, which a
re about one quarter and one half those measured for a-Si layers forme
d on flat SiO2. These characteristics are attributed largely to the ef
fect of interaction of a-Si ''slit nano wire'' layers and the slit wal
l surface.