UV-pretreatment- and near-infrared rapid thermal annealing-enhanced dehydrogenation for a-Si:H thin films at 400 degree C

A new dehydrogenation processing method was developed for the low-temperature polysilicon process. This method can reduce both the process temperature and time through the combination of an ultraviolet pretreatment (UVP) process with near-infrared rapid thermal annealing (NIR-RTA). NIR-RTA using tungsten-halogen lamps was observed to reduce the dehydrogenation time by approximately two thirds and the temperature by approximately 20 degree C compared to conventional furnace processing. The UVP process was able to lower the dehydrogenation temperature by a further 20 degree C. Thus, the new dehydrogenation process, consisting of UVP followed by NIR-RTA, could achieve a hydrogen concentration of 1.97at.% in 20min at 360 degree C.