A simple lateral grain growth of polysilicon employing single excimer laser irradiation is proposed. In order to increase the size of silicon grain and to control the location of the large lateral grain, the oxide trench is employed under the amorphous silicon film in the proposed method. The proposed oxide trench, which is shaped like a triangle or a polygon with an acute angle, induces temperature gradient on the molten silicon film during the solidification. It was verified by SEM that about 2 μm-long silicon grains are successfully achieved near the oxide trench edge and the locations of lateral grains are controlled by the angular points of the diagram.

We have successfully obtained large lateral grains with well-controlled grain boundary. The proposed excimer laser annealing (ELA) method produces 2-dimensionally controlled grain growth because the temperature gradient is induced in two directions. Along the channel direction, the floating active structure produces large thermal gradient due to very low thermal conductivity of the air-gap. Along the perpendicular direction to the channel, the surface tension effect also produces thermal gradient. The proposed ELA method can control the grain boundary perpendicular and parallel to current path with only one laser irradiation.

An ultra-low temperature (< 200°C) polycrystalline silicon (poly-Si) film is fabricated for the plastic substrate application using inductively coupled plasma chemical vapor deposition (ICP-CVD) and excimer laser annealing. The precursor active layer is deposited using the SiH4/He mixture at 150°C (substrate). The deposited silicon film consists of crystalline component as well as hydrogenated amorphous component. The hydrogen content in the precursor layer is less than 5 at%. The grain size of the precursor active silicon film is about 200nm and it is increased up to 500nm after excimer laser irradiation.

An ultra-low temperature processed silicon dioxide film has been fabricated by inductively coupled plasma chemical vapor deposition at 150°C using He/N2O/SiH4 mixture. The deposited silicon dioxide film exhibits a high breakdown field larger than 6MV/cm in case of high ICP plasma condition while the flat band voltage of the oxide film significantly shifted in the negative direction with increasing ICP power. In order to obtain both high electrical breakdown filed and the low flat-band voltage, excimer laser irradiation with the energy density of 430mJ/cm2 is employed. The oxide film irradiated by excimer laser exhibited considerably shifted in the positive direction without scarifying the breakdown characteristics.