Uniform dehydrogenation of amorphous silicon thin films using a wide thermal annealing system

Abstract

To prevent ablation caused by sudden hydrogen eruption during crystallization of hydrogenated amorphous Si (a-Si:H) thin films, a wide dehydrogenation thermal annealing (wDTA) system was developed to reduce hydrogen content in a-Si:H film prior to its crystallization process. The annealed a-Si:H films were fully dehydrogenated and nanocrystallized by the wDTA system. Raman scattering measurement revealed that the dehydrogenation process lowers the hydrogen content through disappearance of the peak intensity at 2000 cm⁻¹. The a-Si:H film was transformed into nanocrystallized Si with lower residual stress. The major advantage of this wDTA was the large area uniformity of the thermal and the resulting material properties for 8 generation display. The uniform material characteristics of the hydrogen content, thickness, energy bandgap, and transmittance of the annealed Si films in the overall area was confirmed by Raman spectroscopy, spectroscopic ellipsometry, and UV-vis spectrometer measurement.