Growth of high-crystallinity silicon films by a combination of intermittent pulse heating and plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition.

We have developed a process to grow high-crystallinity silicon films on insulators by intermittent pulse heating (IPH)-assisted plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition to address a drawback of incubation layer formation at the early stage of growth. By applying electrical pulses (22 V, 5 Hz, 10% duty ratio) to a Mo strip underneath a SiO₂ layer, the surface is instantaneously heated to 1050 K while maintaining a steady substrate temperature of 670 K. The growth mechanism similar to that of solid-phase epitaxy enhanced its growth rate up to 1.2 nm s⁻¹, which is five times greater than that of a-Si grown outside the Mo strip. The grown films assisted with IPH also showed a 97% crystalline volume fraction with no incubation layer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]