Dynamic Transmission Electron Microscope Study on the Crystallization of Ion-Bombarded Amorphous Germanium Thin Films

The structure-properties relationships of amorphous group IV semiconductors such as germanium (a-Ge) have attracted wide research interests over the past decades. The materials have great technological significance thanks to a plethora of applications, and understandings of their structural properties provide key scientific insights for those with similar covalently bounded networks. Pulsed laser induced crystallization is a common method to evolve the nanostructure in a-Ge. In this study, we report the correlations between the differences in the nanostructure of a-Ge thin films created by ion bombardment, and the laser crystallization kinetics measured using dynamic transmission electron microscope (DTEM).