Epitaxial thickening by hot wire chemical vapor deposition of polycrystalline silicon seed layers on glass

The approach of epitaxial thickening by Hot Wire CVD (at Utrecht University; UU) of polycrystalline seed layers produced by Aluminium Induced Crystallization (AIC; at UNSW) at < 500 degrees C on glass was investigated. At UU, the AIC layers were thickened by 150-300 nm, where poly2 conditions led to 60% crystalline ratio and epi conditions to 70% crystalline ratio. In both cases the optical (lateral) feature size was similar to 5 mu m, and epitaxial growth was observed to have taken place locally both in cross-sectional TEM and in optical micrographs. From X-ray Diffraction Measurements, the vertical grain dimensions are 70 nm. At the low substrate temperatures for epitaxial thickening used in this experiment (370 degrees C), we found that epitaxial growth breaks down after similar to 100 nm. (c) 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.