Crystallographic orientation of silicon on an amorphous substrate using an artificial surface-relief grating and laser crystallization

Uniform crystallographic orientation of silicon films, 500 nm thick, has been achieved on amorphous fused-silica substrates by laser crystallization of amorphous silicon deposited over surface-relief gratings etched into the substrates. The gratings had a square-wave cross section with a 3.8-μm spatial period and a 100-nm depth. The 〈100〉 directions in the silicon were parallel to the grating and perpendicular to the substrate plane. We propose that orientation of overlayer films induced by artificial surface patterns be called graphoepitaxy.