Effects of annealing temperature and interfacial oxide thickness on layer exchange metal-induced crystallization

In this paper, we investigated a layer exchange metal-induced crystallization (LE-MIC) process in detail for various thicknesses of the interfacial oxide (Al ₂O ₃: 0, 2, and 5 nm) at different annealing temperatures of 400 °C, 450 °C, 500 °C, and 550 °C, at which the metal-induced germanium melting (MIGM) process can occur. This MIGM mechanism, together with the LE-MIC process improved the quality of the Ge crystallites. Finally, we achieved fairly big (4 ~ 5 μm) and (111)-oriented Ge crystal grains on a SiO ₂/Si substrate at 550 °C by combining the LE-MIC and the MIGM processes.