Optical and Heat Transfer Characteristics in a Rapid Thermal Annealing System for LCD Manufacturing Procedures

The objectives of this article are to suggest a way to evaluate the quality of polycrystalline silicon film from the thin film optics analysis and also to investigate the heat transfer characteristics in a rapid thermal annealing system for LCD manufacturing. The characteristic transmission matrix method is used to calculate the transmittance, and the predictions are compared with the experimental data for two different samples. The transient and one-dimensional conductive and radiative heat transfer equations are additionally solved to predict the surface temperatures of thin films. The two-flux method is also used for radiation and the ray-tracing method is utilized to consider the wave interference. As the film thickness increases, the peak transmittance increases and the wavelength for the peak becomes longer due to wave interferences. These characteristics can be used for in-situ and practical estimation of the silicon film quality during the crystallization process. From thermal analysis, it is shown that the selective heating in the multilayer film structure acts as an important mechanism during the annealing of silicon film deposited on the glass.