To: Krowbar who wrote (7686 ) 5/13/2004 9:09:40 PM From: Tom Swift Read Replies (1) | Respond to The material of the present invention is prepared by repeated application of a two-step process. In a formation step, a sub-coalescent amount of a non-single crystalline silicon material is formed. A sub-coalescent amount is an amount of material that is insufficient to provide full coverage of the surface upon which it is formed. Instead, portions of the surface upon which formation occurs remain uncovered and growth of the ultimate semiconductor body does not occur in a layer-by-layer fashion. The sub-coalescent structures that are formed in the formation step contain a high fraction of surface atoms and possess a distorted bonding configuration. The formation step can be accomplished by a variety of methods including physical vapor deposition, chemical vapor deposition, plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition, laser ablation sputtering, and evaporation. Representative suitable reactants for this step include SiH.sub.4, Si.sub.2 H.sub.6 and related silicon compounds either undiluted or diluted with H.sub.2. The purpose of the formation step is to provide sub-coalescent structures that will subsequently be stabilized and incorporated into the body of the ultimate semiconductor to be prepared. is new - the process is different from the method we discussed a while ago where H2 dilution control was used to try to stay at the amorphous-microcrystalline phase boundary.
