Highly conductive ultrathin crystalline Si layers by thermal crystallization of amorphous Si

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
Ultrathin, highly conductive polycrystalline Si films have been produced on glass by crystallization of 200 Å a-Si films. The films, which result from our relatively low-temperature process (e.g., 700 °C/4 min), are completely crystallized with grain sizes of the order of 1 μm for doped films. Both n- and p-type Si films of high conductivity (∼102 S/cm) can be obtained by this process. These 200 Å crystallized films, produced from doped a-Si:H precursors, are over 10 orders of magnitude more conductive than deposited microcrystalline Si films of the same thickness. The high conductivities in these ultrathin films on glass make them very attractive for applications in photodetector and solar cell structures.