Disclosed is an example method of manufacturing a semiconductor device. The disclosed example method includes depositing a gate insulating layer on an active region of a self aligned silicide (salicide) region and a non-self aligned silicide (salicide) region of a semiconductor substrate, forming a gate electrode, a poly crystal silicon layer, on the gate insulating layer of the self aligned silicide (salicide) region, and forming a spacer on both sidewalls of the gate electrode. The example method may further include depositing a silicide shielding layer on the gate insulating layer to cover the gate electrode and the spacer, forming a photoresist on the silicide shielding layer of the non-self aligned silicide (salicide) region, removing the silicide shielding layer of the self aligned silicide (salicide) region to expose the gate electrode, and performing an ion-implantation to render the poly crystal silicon layer of the gate electrode amorphous, without removing the photoresist on the silicide shielding layer of the non-self aligned silicide (salicide) region. The example method may further include removing the photoresist on the silicide shielding layer of the non-self aligned silicide (salicide) region and cleaning the semiconductor substrate and depositing a metal layer for forming a silicide layer and forming the silicide layer on the gate electrode of the self aligned silicide (salicide) region by annealing the semiconductor device.

Methods of manufacturing semiconductor devices

Influence of microstructure and hydrogen concentration on amorphous silicon crystallization

Optical properties and crystallinity of hydrogenated nanocrystalline silicon (nc-Si:H) thin films deposited by rf-PECVD

Solid phase crystallization (SPC) of amorphous silicon films grown by low pressure chemical vapor deposition was conducted using a tube furnace in nitrogen ambient at temperatures ranging from 560 °C to 1000 °C. The transformed crystalline fraction shows typical sigmoidal curves as a function of annealing time using Raman analysis adopted in this work. Arrhenius plot of the measured incubation time does not fit to the straight line since SPC kinetics has strong temperature dependence and since the heating rate is slow when using a conventional heating method. The grain size decreases as the annealing temperature increases. It, however, is not sensitive to the annealing temperature beyond 800 °C, since SPC kinetics is complete during the period of heating-up according to Raman spectroscopy. It was observed that doping of impurity atoms affect the crystallization kinetics.

Kinetics of solid phase crystallization of amorphous silicon analyzed by Raman spectroscopy

Hydrogenated nanocrystalline silicon (nc-Si:H) thin films deposited on c-Si and quartz substrates by layer-by-layer (LBL) technique using radio-frequency plasma enhanced chemical vapour deposition system. The effects of rf power on the interlayer elemental profiling, structural and optical properties of the films were investigated by Auger electron spectroscopy, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, Raman scattering spectroscopy, X-ray diffraction and optical transmission and reflection spectroscopy. The results revealed that the LBL deposition leads to a formation of different ranges of crystallite sizes of nc-Si corresponds 3–6 and 8–26 nm respectively. LBL deposition also demonstrated a capability to increase the crystalline volume fraction of nc-Si up to 65.3 % with the crystallite size in between 5 and 6 nm, at the rf power in between 80 and 100 W. However, the crystalline volume fraction decreased for the rf power above 100 W due to the growth of nc-Si was suppressed by the formation of SiO2. In addition, the onset of crystallization of the films deposited on c-Si and quartz substrates are different with increase in the rf power. The effects of rf power on the growth of nc-Si, and the hydrogen content, structural disorder, crystallite size of nc-Si and oxygen diffusion into the LBL layer with the change of optical energy gap under the variation of rf power are also discussed.

Structural and optical properties of nc-Si:H thin films deposited by layer-by-layer technique

Large-grained oriented polycrystalline silicon thin films prepared by nickel-silicide-induced crystallization

We report the results of enhanced nickel induced crystallization of intrinsic hydrogenated amorphous silicon thin films under vacuum conditions. Crystallization was performed by conventional furnace annealing at both atmospheric pressure and vacuum or low pressure conditions (≈10–6 Torr) for comparison. We have investigated the influence of low pressure during annealing on the resulting polycrystalline films by means of optical microscopy, ultraviolet reflectance, and photoacoustic spectrometry measurements. A faster crystallization and a smaller grain size were observed when the process is carried out under vacuum, with an annealing time reduction of more than 50%. We discuss, from a thermodynamical viewpoint, some possible causes by which vacuum annealing influences incubation and nucleation stages due to the presence of mobile hydrogen atoms inside the amorphous silicon matrix. Large grains with diameters of 30 and 100 μm were obtained at vacuum and atmospheric pressure, respectively.

Vacuum-enhanced nickel-induced crystallization of hydrogenated amorphous silicon

The nickel-induced crystallization of hydrogenated amorphous silicon (a-Si:H) is used to obtain large grained polycrystalline silicon thin films on glass substrates. a-Si:H is deposited by plasma enhanced chemical vapour deposition at 200 °C, preparing intrinsic and slightly p-doped samples. Each sample was divided in several pieces, over which increasing Ni concentrations were sputtered. Two crystallization methods are compared, conventional furnace annealing (CFA) and rapid thermal annealing (RTA). The crystallization was followed by optical microscopy and scanning electron microscopy observations, X-ray diffraction, and reflectance measurements in the UV region. The large grain sizes obtained – larger than 100 μm for the samples crystallized by CFA – are very encouraging for the preparation of low-cost thin film polycrystalline silicon solar cells.

http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1742-6596/167/1/012046/pdf

Pablo Andres Rinaldi

Papers

Influence of microstructure and hydrogen concentration on amorphous silicon crystallization

Large-grained oriented polycrystalline silicon thin films prepared by nickel-silicide-induced crystallization

Vacuum-enhanced nickel-induced crystallization of hydrogenated amorphous silicon

Nickel-induced crystallization of amorphous silicon

Solid Phase Epitaxy on Large Grained Polycrystalline Seed Layers