A novel technique for in-situ monitoring of crystallinity and temperature during rapid thermal annealing of thin Si/Si-Ge films on quartz/glass

A novel technique is presented to simultaneously measure temperature and crystallinity insitu during the rapid thermal annealing of thin Si / SiGe films on transparent substrates for active matrix liquid crystal display applications. The technique uses acoustic waves to monitor temperature, by measuring changes in velocity with temperature. The technique enables accurate tracking of crystalline phase transitions along with temperature, since it is independent of emissivity. This provides a methodology for closed-loop control and end-point detection. The experiments on thin amorphous Si on Quartz demonstrate temperature repeatability of 2%. Also, the technique proved sensitive enough to detect the onset of nucleation, as evidenced by TEM.