Experimental Investigation of the Solid/Liquid Interface of Thin Films During Thermal Processing - Creativity Award

电子材料加工中最具挑战性的问题之一是在绝缘膜（SiO2）上制造薄（1um）的单晶硅膜。由此产生的产品是绝缘体上硅系统（SOI），可以用作许多高级应用的构建块。通过完善的技术，如化学气相沉积，多晶硅薄膜可以很容易地创建。难点在于如何将其再结晶为单晶。提出的研究计划：(1)验证创建单晶的困难是否主要由传热驱动；(2)尝试建立传热技术，成功地将硅薄膜以单晶的形式再结晶。如果成功，这些技术将提高用于微电子工业的SOI薄膜的质量。

One of the most challenging problems in electronic materials processing is the creation of a thin (1um) single crystal silicon film on an insulating film (SiO2). The resulting product is a silicon-on-insulator system (SOI) and can be used as the building block for many advanced applications. Through well established techniques such as chemical vapor deposition, a polycrystalline silicon film can be easily created. The challenge is to recrystallize it in the form of a single crystal. %%% The proposed research plans to: (1) verify if the difficulties of creating a single crystal are primarily driven by heat transfer; and (2) try to establish heat transfer techniques to successfully recrystallize thin silicon films in the form of single crystals. If successful, these techniques will improve the quality of SOI films used in the microelectronic industry.