TY - JOUR

T1 - Non-thermal regimes of laser annealing of semiconductor nanostructures : crystallization without melting

AU - Mirza, Inam

AU - Bulgakov, Alexander V

AU - Sopha, Hanna

AU - Starinskiy, Sergey V

AU - Tur, Hana

AU - Smr, Martin

AU - Volodin, Vladimir A

AU - Mocek, Tomá

AU - Macak, Jan M

AU - Bulgakova, Nadezhda M

N1 - The author(s) declare financial support was received for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. This work was supported by the European Regional Development Fund and the state budget of the Czech Republic (project BIATRI, No. CZ.02.1.01/0.0/0.0/15_003/0000445; project HiLASE CoE, No. CZ.02.1.01/0.0/0.0/15_006/0000674). HS and JMM gratefully acknowledge the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports of the Czech Republic for supporting CEMNAT Large Research Infrastructure (No. LM2023037). VAV acknowledges support from the Ministry of Science and Higher Education of the Russian Federation under the grant number 075-15-2020-797 (13.1902.21.0024).

PY - 2023

Y1 - 2023

N2 - As-prepared nanostructured semiconductor materials are usually found in an amorphous form, which needs to be converted into a crystalline one for improving electronic properties and achieving enhanced application functionalities. The most utilized method is thermal annealing in a furnace, which however is time- and energy-consuming and not applicable for low-temperature melting substrates. An alternative is laser annealing, which can be carried out in a relatively short time and, additionally, offers the possibility of annealing localized areas. However, laser-annealed nanostructures are often distorted by melting, while preserving the as-prepared morphology is essential for practical applications. In this work, we analyze conditions of non-thermal ultrafast laser annealing of two kinds of nanostructures: anodic TiO2 nanotube layers and Ge/Si multilayer stacks. For both cases, regimes of crystallization have been found, which yield in preserving the initial nanomaterial morphologies without any melting signs. On these examples, ultrafast non-thermal mechanisms of structural material transformation are discussed, which can provide new opportunities for conversion of amorphous semiconductor nanomaterials into a desired crystalline form that is of high demand for existing and emerging technologies.

AB - As-prepared nanostructured semiconductor materials are usually found in an amorphous form, which needs to be converted into a crystalline one for improving electronic properties and achieving enhanced application functionalities. The most utilized method is thermal annealing in a furnace, which however is time- and energy-consuming and not applicable for low-temperature melting substrates. An alternative is laser annealing, which can be carried out in a relatively short time and, additionally, offers the possibility of annealing localized areas. However, laser-annealed nanostructures are often distorted by melting, while preserving the as-prepared morphology is essential for practical applications. In this work, we analyze conditions of non-thermal ultrafast laser annealing of two kinds of nanostructures: anodic TiO2 nanotube layers and Ge/Si multilayer stacks. For both cases, regimes of crystallization have been found, which yield in preserving the initial nanomaterial morphologies without any melting signs. On these examples, ultrafast non-thermal mechanisms of structural material transformation are discussed, which can provide new opportunities for conversion of amorphous semiconductor nanomaterials into a desired crystalline form that is of high demand for existing and emerging technologies.

UR - https://www.scopus.com/record/display.uri?eid=2-s2.0-85175694432&origin=inward&txGid=f157077d04d259693fdc64ecddf30c9a

UR - https://www.mendeley.com/catalogue/fd2c5609-6329-3993-80eb-ee3716e3da12/

U2 - 10.3389/fnano.2023.1271832

DO - 10.3389/fnano.2023.1271832

M3 - Article

VL - 5

SP - 1

EP - 12

JO - Frontiers in Nanotechnology

JF - Frontiers in Nanotechnology

M1 - 1271832

ER -