Position-controlled growth of sige crystal grains on insulator by indentation-induced solid-phase crystallization

Indentation-induced solid-phase crystallization (SPC) was proposed to achieve position-controlled crystal growth of Si_1-xGe_x (x: 0-1) on insulating substrates. The results demonstrated that large SiGe grains (>2 μm) over the entire range of Ge fractions were grown at controlled positions without using catalyst metals. In addition, crystal regions were predominantly oriented in the (111) direction for samples with low Ge fractions (<30%), while crystal regions became randomly oriented with increasing Ge fraction (>30%). Although the incubation times of indentation-induced SPC are longer than those of Ni-imprint-induced SPC, indentation-induced SPC is attractive because the crystal grains do not include metals which would degrade the transistor performance.