Beam-induced phase transformations in silicon

This thesis concerns the interaction betwen laser-, ion- and electron-beams and silicon. Chapter 2 describes a facility for materials research with wich a wide scope of ion beam experiments can be performed. It also shortly reviews the increasing interest in MeV ion implantation, which is a new topic in materials research19. Ion implantation is used in Chapter 3 to form amorphous layers in crystalline Si. Pulsed laser irradiation of these layers is employed to study non-equilibrium phase transformations. 'Explosive' crystallization phenomena are observed and the interface kinetics of freezing is studied. In Chapter 4, high-energy electron beams are used to support the transformation from amorphous to crystalline Si. Both the nuclear and electronic interactions are studied. The useful application of pulsed-laser beams for thin-film processing is exploited in Chapter 5. By irradiating solid materials while immersed in a liquid medium, thin surface films with interesting properties could be synthesized. These phase transformations at the liquid-solid interface are studied both fundamentally and from an application point of view. Finally, Chapter 6 describes experiments concerning ion implantation in combination wiht pulsed-laser annealing for processing crystalling Si solar cells. (author). 340 refs.; 76 figs.; 3 tabs