Sputtered amorphous silicon thin films for diode laser crystallization

Multicrystalline silicon thin films with large grains (100 μm) on glass are useful for thin film solar cells and for thin film transistors. These films can be prepared by diode laser irradiation of amorphous silicon films, which previously had been deposited by PECVD or electron beam evaporation. In this paper, the applicability of sputtered amorphous silicon thin films on glass for diode laser crystallization is investigated. For this process the sputter gas content in the films and their optical properties, particularly the absorption for the diode laser wavelength of 808 nm, are crucial. The sputtering parameters gas pressure and power are optimized for increasing the optical absorption and for decreasing the sputter gas incorporation. It is demonstrated that if using optimum deposition parameters diode laser crystallization leads to large grained multicrystalline silicon thin films. The crystallized layers show, different to previous results, a preferred (100)-orientation.