Silicon Phase Transition or Laser Annealing Revisited

The USA-USSR Ion Implantation Workshop held at SUNY, Albany in July 1977 marked the beginning of laser annealing. Since then the field has evolved in several directions. In particular there have been fundamental developments in the understanding of Si crystallization and amorphization phenomena. Amorphous Si, for example, has been observed to undergo a first order melting transition at a temperature some 250degrees beneath the crystalline melting temperature. Recent ion beam induced crystallization experiments, which show intriguing similarities with the laser induced melting and crystallization experiments, will be discussed.