Kabushiki Kaisha Toshiba

Takashi Fujimura

Shinichi Kawamura

Hiroshi Mitsuhashi

Yasumasa Goto

Yuki Matsuura

Nobuo Imai

It is possible to prevent lowering in productivity of thin-film transistors with no decrease in performance of the transistors. Provided are depositing an amorphous semiconductor film on a substrate, a first irradiating the amorphous semiconductor film with an energy-rich beam in an atmosphere of a gas containing an inert gas as a major component with a specific amount of oxygen, to change the amorphous semiconductor film into a polycrystalline semiconductor film, and a second irradiating the polycrystalline semiconductor film with an energy-rich beam in an atmosphere of a gas containing an inert gas as major component with oxygen of an amount less than the specific amount.

Method of forming polycrystalline semiconductor film

A method of manufacturing a poly-crystalline silicon (p-Si) film includes the steps in which an excimer laser anneals an amorphous silicon (a-Si) film deposited on a glass substrate and makes the same into the poly-crystalline silicon while the glass substrate is moved in a moving direction relative to the laser. Prior to carrying out the annealing step, a couple of the laser pulses are applied to different places of the a-Si film, provided that each of the laser pulses has different energy fluence and one pulse at a time is applied to the a-Si film. The pulse applied area is divided into two sections by a reference line perpendicular to the moving direction of the glass substrate. Average grain sizes of the p-Si film in the two sections are compared to each other to determine the moving direction.

Growing community of inventors

Fukaya, Japan

Takashi Fujimura