Texture development and grain boundary faceting in an

excimer laser-crystallized silicon thin film

Sung Bo Leea兲
Department of Ceramic Engineering, Hanyang University, Seoul 133-791, South Korea
Jaehyun Moon, Choong-Heui Chung, Yong-Hae Kim, and Jin Ho Lee
Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute, Daejeon 305-350, South Korea
Duck-Kyun Choi
Department of Ceramic Engineering, Hanyang University, Seoul 133-791, South Korea
共Received 13 April 2006; accepted 17 August 2006; published 19 September 2006兲
A 50-nm-thick amorphous silicon film on a SiO2 substrate is crystallized by an excimer
laser-induced sequential lateral solidification. In the crystallized film, the laser scanning direction
has a tendency to generate the 具100典 texture formation, whereas the surface normal and another
in-plane orientation 共normal to the scanning direction兲, designated as rolling direction, do not reveal
any distinct texture development. Some grain boundaries are faceted, suggesting having a low trap
density. Thus, the presence of the faceted grain boundaries is favorable for polycrystalline silicon
electronic devices, such as thin film transistors and solar cells. A further grain boundary faceting
might be induced by annealing processes. © 2006 American Vacuum Society.
关DOI: 10.1116/1.2353845兴

I. INTRODUCTION system at room temperature. The oxide deposition was fol-

Excimer laser has been used for the crystallization of
amorphous Si 共a-Si兲 films.1,2 To produce large-grained poly-
crystalline Si for the fabrications of polycrystalline Si 共poly-
Si兲 thin film transistors 共TFTs兲 and thin film solar cells, Im
and co-workers have developed an excimer laser-based se-
quential lateral solidification 共SLS兲 process.3,4 In the SLS,
the a-Si film is irradiated to be completely melted in a region
of the focused line beam, and the crystal grows from the
edges of the melted area, leading to directionally grown,
large-grained poly Si.
For all applications of the poly-Si, the carrier flow is
mainly obstructed by the potential barrier at the grain bound-
aries 共GBs兲, and thus, the GB structure strongly affects the
electrical performances of the poly-Si TFTs.5–8 So far, how-
ever, little has been done to characterize the GB structure in
SLS-crystallized a-Si films. The aim of this work is to ex-
plore the GB population and morphology, and the texture in
a SLS-crystallized film using a combination of high-
resolution transmission electron microscopy 共HRTEM兲 and
electron backscattering diffraction 共EBSD兲 analysis. The
present study shows that the laser scan direction 共hereafter,
scanning direction兲 has a tendency to generate the 具100典 tex-
ture formation, though not so prominently, while the surface
normal and another in-plane orientation 共designated as roll-
ing direction兲 which is normal to the scanning direction do
not show any distinct textures. Some GBs are observed to be
faceted with asymmetric GB facet components
II. EXPERIMENTAL PROCEDURE
A 600-nm-thick SiO2 buffer film was deposited on a glass
substrate using a radio frequency 共rf兲 magnetron sputtering
a兲
Electronic mail: bolee@hanyang.ac.kr
lowed by deposition of a 50-nm-thick a-Si film, also depos-
ited by rf magnetron sputtering system at room temperature.9
After the deposition process, the a-Si film was irradiated
with a 308 nm XeCl excimer laser with a 25 ns pulse dura-
tion at an energy level sufficient to fully melt the film of
a-Si.
The grain orientations were determined with good statis-
tics by Kikuchi patterns obtained in a commercial Oxford
Instruments EBSD setup in the JEOL JSM-6500F scanning
electron microscope. The EBSD measurements were made in
the surface area of 25⫻ 25 ␮m2. The texture was evaluated
for three orthogonal directions: the surface normal, and two
in-plane orientations, which are the laser scanning direction
and the rolling direction normal to the scanning direction.
The GB character is represented by ⌺ values 共up to 45兲,
which are defined as the reciprocal density of the common
sites of the adjoining grains associated with the coincidence
site lattice 共CSL兲 points.
To characterize the GB structure, HRTEM was used.
Disks of 3 mm diameter were cut from the wafer using a
disk cutter for TEM specimen preparation. The disks were
mechanically back thinned to a thickness of about 20 ␮m,
and then ion milled from the glass substrate side at an accel-
erating voltage of 4 kV using an ion polisher 关precision ion
polishing system 共PIPS兲, Gatan Inc.兴. HRTEM observations
were made in plan view, using the JEM 4010 共400 keV ac-
celeration voltage; 0.15 nm point-to-point resolution; JEOL
Co. Ltd., Japan兲 and the JEM-ARM1300S which is operated
at 1.25 MeV and equipped with a side-entry heating stage
共0.12 nm point-to-point resolution; JEOL Co. Ltd., Japan兲.
The base pressure in the specimen chamber is ⬃3
⫻ 10−6 Pa.

2322 J. Vac. Sci. Technol. B 24„5…, Sep/Oct 2006 1071-1023/2006/24„5…/2322/4/$23.00 ©2006 American Vacuum Society 2322
2323 Lee et al.: Texture development and grain boundary faceting
FIG. 1. Plan-view TEM image of the laser-crystallized Si film. The grains
are elongated along the laser scanning direction.
III. RESULTS
Figure 1 shows a typical microstructure of the SLS-
crystallized a-Si in the present study. 共The white area in the
bottom right part of Fig. 1 is the TEM specimen hole.兲 The
Si grains are elongated in the scanning direction, approxi-
mately 0.5– 2.5 ␮m in length and 0.2– 0.4 ␮m in width. The
grain orientations obtained by EBSD are represented by in-
verse pole figures for the three crystallographic directions
共surface normal and rolling and scanning directions兲, as
shown in Fig. 2. Whereas the surface normals and the rolling
directions do not show any distinct texture, the scanning di-
FIG. 2. Inverse pole figures for the surface normals and the rolling and scanning directions.
JVST B - Microelectronics and Nanometer Structures
2323
rections tend to cluster around 具100典. EBSD analysis also
presents information on the GB population. Most CSL GBs
up to a value of ⌺ = 45 are dominated by first- 共⌺3兲 and
second-order 共⌺9兲 twin GBs with fractions of about 70% and
about 10%, respectively 共Table I兲.
In addition to the GB population measured by EBSD, the
GB structure was examined by HRTEM. Flat twin bound-
aries 共⌺3兲 were frequently observed in the crystallized a-Si
共not shown here兲, in agreement with the result of the GB
population. Some GBs are observed to be faceted with
atomic-scale steps or long asymmetric GB facet components,
as shown in Fig. 3. In Fig. 3共a兲, the right part of a GB
exhibits a facet parallel to the 兵110其 plane of the upper grain,
but the left part of the GB is still smoothly curved. In Fig.
3共b兲, a GB is reconstructed into atomic-scale microfacets
parallel to the 兵110其 planes of the upper grain. Lattice fringes
seen in the bottom grain arise from the 兵111其 planes. The
facet planes do not align exactly parallel to those planes. In
Fig. 3共c兲, a GB shows a long asymmetric facet which bears
兵112其upper 储 兵111其bottom grain relation.
IV. DISCUSSION
In the SLS, solidification occurs by the advancing of the
melt/c-Si interface and, thus, the scanning direction will
adopt orientations following one of the preferred growth
axes. The 具100典 texture to the scanning directions observed
2324 Lee et al.: Texture development and grain boundary faceting 2324

TABLE I. Fraction of special grain boundaries among total CSL grain bound-
aries up to a value of ⌺ = 45.

CSL Count %

3 811 65.35
5 28 2.26
7 11 0.89
9 140 11.28
11 23 1.85
13 12 0.97
15 14 1.13
17 15 1.21
19 12 0.97
21 15 1.21
23 7 0.56
25 8 0.64
27 22 1.77
29 39 3.14
31 5 0.40
33 10 0.81
35 25 2.01
37 7 0.56
39 7 0.56
41 3 0.24
43 16 1.29
45 11 0.89

in the present study can be found in the report of Nerding et

al. on SLS-crystallized a-Si films.10 At a given Nd: YVO4
laser repetition rate 共20 kHz兲, thin a-Si thin films 共50 and
75 nm thick兲 deposited on glass substrates show a strong
具100典 texture to the scanning direction, while the texture for
a 300-nm-thick film largely deviates from 具100典.
Drosd and Washburn suggested an atomic model, where
the difference in crystallization rate is related to the number
of Si atoms incorporated into c-Si from a-Si to complete a
sixfold ring of atomic bonds, which is characteristic of the
diamond cubic structure.11 The atomic bond structure of
a-Si was not considered in the model. For 具100典, only one
atom is needed for the completion, whereas for 具110典 and
具111典, two and three atoms are required, respectively, leading
to the fastest crystallization rate of the 具100典 direction. In the
SLS, the directionality of crystal growth will depend on the
net rate of atomic attachment to c-Si, and thus, the model by
Drosd and Washburn11 can be applied to the evolution of the
scanning direction texture in the SLS-crystallized a-Si films.
Actually, the expectation suggested by the model11 is quali-
tatively consistent with our observation of the 具100典 texture
to the scanning directions.
Originally, the model11 was suggested for solid-phase
crystallization behavior reported by Csepregi et al.12 They
showed that for Si-implanted a-Si layers on single-
crystalline Si substrates with specific surface orientations,
recrystallization occurs by the migration of the a-Si/ c-Si in-
terface and it is the fastest in the 具100典 direction, followed by
具110典 and then 具111典.12 As will be shown below, however,
previous reports on the solid-phase crystallization13–15
showed preferred growth directions different from the 具100典
FIG. 3. High-resolution images showing that some grain boundaries are
faceted with long asymmetric grain boundary planes 关共a兲 and 共c兲兴 or atomic-
scale facets 共b兲.
directions. The a-Si made by implantation of the c-Si would
have different densities and energy states with different sur-
face orientations of c-Si to show the fastest growth direction
of 具100典, and be also different from the a-Si films used in the
previous study.13–15 We thus believe that it is not reasonable
to relate the model suggested by Drosd and Washburn11 di-
rectly to the results of Csepregi et al.12
For the solid-phase crystallization, needles with 具111典 and
具112典 growth directions13 or dendrites with 具112典 growth
directions14,15 have been dominantly observed. Lee et al.13
suggested that, if assuming that the stress state of the needle-
like shape is approximated by the uniaxial stress, the strain
energy W per unit volume of a specimen strained by ␧ under
the uniaxial stress state is expressed as W = 21 ␧2E, where E is
Young’s modulus. Young’s modulus E is conveniently de-
scribed as a measure of the stiffness and the strain energy of

J. Vac. Sci. Technol. B, Vol. 24, No. 5, Sep/Oct 2006

2325 Lee et al.: Texture development and grain boundary faceting
the uniaxial stress state. For c-Si, the 具111典 direction has
maximum Young’s modulus 共185.9 GPa兲 and the highest
strain energy density among other directions. This indicates
that the a-Si matrix contacting the 具111典-oriented needles
will receive the highest strain energy density, enhancing
crystallization along the 具111典 directions. The 具112典 growth
directions are interpreted as being possible with the help of
twins and stacking faults.13–15 The deviation from the 具100典
texture for the 300-nm-thick film10 is attributed to the effect
of the solid-phase crystallization. With increasing film thick-
ness, at the same laser energy density, a part of the a-Si film
near the substrate can remain amorphous, and the remaining
a-Si would also undergo crystallization, which belongs to the
category of the solid-phase crystallization. For the thick film,
the two kinds of the crystallizations would compete with
each other, leading to a mixed scanning direction deviated
from 具100典 as shown in Ref. 10.
Some GBs are observed to be faceted, as shown in Fig. 3.
Cusps in the plot of the grain boundary energy with respect
to the GB plane orientations lead to Herring torque terms,
which rotate GB planes to have the lowest energy configu-
ration. Such anisotropy leads to GB faceting. Grain boundary
faceting is a function of temperature and impurity addition or
removal.16–18 The observed GB faceting is considered to oc-
cur during the solidification. GB faceting after the solidifica-
tion is also found in Zn bicrystals.19,20 Asymmetric GB facet
planes, as shown in Fig. 3, can be energetically favorable,
even compared with the symmetric ones, as calculated and
experimentally shown by Merkle and Wolf.21 The GB plane
orientations as well as the grain misorientation relationships
strongly influence the electrical characteristics of poly-Si
used in various electronic devices. Coherent first-order 共⌺3兲
and second-order 共⌺9兲 twin boundaries have a low density of
charge carrier trap sites,5 but random GBs act as traps and
retard the carrier flow.6–8 Reports in the literature show that
asymmetric facet planes are atomically well matched at the
GBs.21,22 Thus, such coherent facet planes, as shown in Fig.
3, are likely to be electrically inactive, or weakly active,
allowing a high mobility of the majority carriers. Kuriyama
et al.23 reported that as the number of laser shots is increased
in the excimer laser crystallization, the grain size of poly-Si
films becomes large and a high field effect mobility of
poly-Si TFT using the Si films can be obtained. They attrib-
uted the enhanced high effect mobility to the large grain size.
During such annealing with many laser shots, additionally,
more GBs can also have an opportunity to undergo faceting
by GB energy anisotropy. In the present experiment, as
shown in Figs. 3共a兲 and 3共b兲, the whole part of each GB is
not faceted, but we expect that further annealing by addi-
tional laser treatments as in Ref. 23 after the SLS might
induce complete faceting of such partially faceted GBs and
even cause nonfaceted GBs to undergo faceting, which
would increase the mobility of the major carriers further.
JVST B - Microelectronics and Nanometer Structures
2325
V. CONCLUDING REMARKS
In summary, an excimer laser-induced sequential lateral
solidification 共SLS兲 of a 50 nm-thick a-Si thin film on a SiO2
substrate reveals a tendency of the 具100典 texture to the scan-
ning direction, which is explained by the anisotropic migra-
tion rate in the melt/ c-Si interface. Some GBs undergo par-
tial faceting. The facet planes are considered to have well-
matched structures, not acting as trap sites. With the
additional introduction of thermal energy, the partially fac-
eted GBs will become fully faceted, and nonfaceted GBs
observed after the solidification are expected to have an op-
portunity to become faceted. Hence, through the develop-
ment of a further annealing process after the SLS, we expect
more favorable electrical characteristics for poly-Si TFTs and
thin film solar cells.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The authors thank Do-Hyun Kim and Heung Nam Han
and Kyuhwan Oh for their help at the EBSD facility. The
TEM specimen preparation of Kyung-Sook Jeon is acknowl-
edged. The HRTEM observations by the JEM-ARM1300S at
Korea Basic Science Institute 共Daejeon, Korea兲 are acknowl-
edged. They are grateful to Young Min Kim for his help at
the TEM. This work was financially supported by Korea Re-
search Foundation Grant 共KRF-2004-005-D00167兲.
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