The grain size of polycrystalline silicon by the excimer laser annealing (ELA) is primarily determined by the fluence, and the distribution uniformity is strongly influenced by the intensity fluctuation. Instead of the conventional CCD profile, a resist film is used to monitor the light intensity distributions over whole illumination area in submicron resolution. The high resolution measurements show speckle patterns with 0.1-0.15 spacing with maximum 10mJ/cm² variation. The fluctuation does not influence the grain size variation in the lateral growth region over 1-2 micrometers area, however, the undulation of intensity about 10mJ/cm² over 10 micrometers distance produces an appreciable changes in the grain sizes. Such a local temperature distribution corresponds to the envelop obtained by averaging small area, and is maintained during crystallization process.

Date Published: 15 July 1999
PDF: 10 pages
Proc. SPIE 3618, Laser Applications in Microelectronic and Optoelectronic Manufacturing IV, (15 July 1999); doi: 10.1117/12.352693

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 3618:
Laser Applications in Microelectronic and Optoelectronic Manufacturing IV
Jan J. Dubowski; Henry Helvajian; Ernst-Wolfgang Kreutz; Koji Sugioka, Editor(s)