Aluminum-induced crystallization (AIC) as a route to reduce the fabrication cost and to obtain polycrystalline Si (p- Si) thin-film of large grain size is a promising alternative of single-crystalline (s-Si) substrate or p-Si thin-film obtained by conventional methods such as solid phase crystallization (SPC) and laser-induced crystallization (LIC). As the AIC process occurs at the interface between a-Si and Al thin-films, there are various process and interface parameters. Also, it directly means that there is a certain parametric window to obtain p-Si of large grain size having uniform crystal orientation. In this article, we investigate the effect of the various process and interface parameters to obtain p-Si of large grain size and uniform crystal orientation from the literature review. We also suggest the potential use of the p-Si as a virtual substrate for the growth of various compound semiconductors in a form of low-dimension as well as thin-film as a way for their monolithic integration on Si.
