Surface melt dynamics and super lateral growth regime in long pulse duration excimer laser crystallization of amorphous Si films

Abstract In this work, the excimer laser induced crystallization of a-Si films on SiO 2 was investigated, using a long pulse duration (200 ns) XeCl source. The microstructural analysis of the laser irradiated area, for incident energy densities comprised between the surface and full melting thresholds of the a-Si layer, respectively, was performed by scanning electron microscopy. A numerical simulation of the surface melt dynamics was also presented and compared to the experimental observations.