A monodisperse spherical Y2O3:Eu3+ phosphor was prepared by a homogeneous precipitation method. The mean size of the phosphor particles (MSPP) was successfully controlled by changing the volume ratio of normal alcohol (RA) (propanol) in the solvents mixed between deionized water and normal propanol. When the RA was increased from 0 to 0.7, the MSPP decreased while maintaining a high yield of >95%. Although the prepared phosphor samples were fired at the same temperature, the thermal energy was delivered more efficiently into the inner side of the phosphor particles with the decrease of the MSPP. Therefore, the crystallinity and also the photoluminescence (PL) intensity of the phosphor increased with the decrease in the MSPP. In addition, because the numbers of Eu3+ ions located near the particle surfaces increased with the decrease of particle size, the ratio of PL intensity caused by the 5D0–7F2 transition to that caused by 5D0–7F1 transition increased from 10.8 to 12.7 with the decrease in MSPP.

We investigated the solid phase crystallization (SPC) behavior of 1000 Å amorphous Si (a- Si) films deposited by plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD) at various temperatures and were able to enhance the grain size of the crystallized polysilicon films using double layers of a-Si filns. The deposition temperature of monolayer a-Si films varied from 200 to 400 °C and the films were recrystallized at 600 °C in nitrogen. As the deposition temperature increased, the incubation time was decreased and both the nucleation rate and growth rate were increased. Especially, the nucleation rate strongly depended on the deposition temperature.

Since the Si-SiO2 interface provides a large number of nucleation sites, it is desirable to suppress nucleation at the interface. As an idea we employed a structure with double layer a-Si films. The bottom a-Si layer deposited at lower temperature could suppress the nucleation at the Si-SiO2 interface while the top a-Si layer deposited at higher temperature could nucleate with a smaller number of nucleation sites. The incubation time and transformation behavior were determined by the deposition temperature of the top layer. As an example, the grain size of the double layer film deposited sequentially at 150 °C and 200 °C enhanced to 1.8 μm while that of the monolayer film deposited at 200 °C was 1.4 μm.