Abstract: Nanocrystalline silicon has been widely investigated in the field of photovoltaic and light-emitting semiconductors, due to it's unique quantum confinement effect. Nanocrystalline silicon usually prepared by annealing amorphous silicon under at high temperatures around 1 000 ℃ for several hours. This atmospherically breaks the Si-Si covalent bond and further forms nanocrystalline silicon local nucleation in amorphous silicon. By contrast, the nanocrystalline silicon was prepared by metal-induced method at a lower temperatures nearly 400—600 ℃. The ionic bond between a silicon atom and a metal atom, which provide the nucleation sites for the nc-Si local nucleation in amorphous silicon, and then the crystallization temperature and time of the nanocrystalline silicon are effectively reduced. In this review, the crystallization mechanisms and the crystallization effects of different metals, such as Ni, Al, Cu, Au, Co, Ag-Cu and Ni-Cu alloys, are described in detail and comparatively analyzed. The results can provide useful references for the preparation of nanocrystalline silicon thin films.
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