Award Date

2009

Degree Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science in Electrical Engineering (MSEE)

Department

Electrical and Computer Engineering

Advisor 1

Biswajit Das, Committee Chair

First Committee Member

Yingtao Jiang

Second Committee Member

Mei Yang

Graduate Faculty Representative

Frank van Breukelen

Number of Pages

51

Abstract

Low temperature crystallization of thin film silicon is important for many industrial applications including flat panel displays and silicon thin film solar cells. Unfortunately this remains a major challenge since crystallization temperature of silicon is above 1,000 degrees Celsius, thus limiting to substrates that can tolerate high temperatures. The inability to deposit crystalline thin films on glass substrates is the reason why flat panel display industry uses amorphous silicon for LCD active matrix displays. Thus the ability to deposit crystallized thin film silicon at low temperatures will have significant impact on thin film silicon applications. It has been observed that certain metals can lower the crystallization temperature of silicon; however, investigation in this area has been rather limited. This thesis investigates the effect of two different metals, aluminum and silver, on the dependence of crystallization temperature of silicon thin films and investigates the properties of such materials.

Keywords

Aluminum; Annealing of silicon films; Low temperatures; Metal-induced crystallization (MIC); Raman of crystalline silicon; Silicon thin films; Silver; X-Ray diffraction of crystalline silicon

Disciplines

Electrical and Computer Engineering | Materials Science and Engineering | Nanoscience and Nanotechnology

File Format

pdf

Degree Grantor

University of Nevada, Las Vegas

Language

English

Rights

IN COPYRIGHT. For more information about this rights statement, please visit http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

Download


Share

COinS