Electrical and Optical Doping of Silicon by Pulsed-Laser Melting

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The manuscript reviews the doping properties in Si by pulsed-laser melting. There are two kind of application of PLM: post-annealing after film deposition (sec. 2.2, on page 6) and annealing after ion implantation for hyperdoping (sec. 3, on page 7). There are several comments here:

1. The title of article is unsuitable.
2. The arrangement of organization is unsuitable, especially in section 2 and 3.
3. On page 5, LPE is an epitaxial growth method, but annealing. PLM is for annealing. They are different.
4. Sub-section on page 16, line 548, should delete.
5. The materials in the manuscript should rewrite.
6. What is electrical doping? What is optical doping? Please mention about it.

Therefore, I cannot recommend it to publish in present situation.

Author Response

1. This is almost the exact title we were asked to review. We have made changes to the headings of section 2 and 3 (and their subsection headings), and also clarified how these sections relate to the article title more clearly (i.e. electrical and optical doping of Si by PLM) (see also our response to comment 2 below). We believe that with these changes, the title is totally suitable for the article.
2. We have added some clarifying sentences that better introduce the readers to these sections and changed many of the section/subsection headings to further clarify. Basically, the early history of pulsed laser melting focussed on doping of silicon (with shallow donors and acceptors) for electronic device applications (electrical doping). Following these early works, the only other major electrical doping application was for flat panel displays, and involved pulsed laser melting of deposited thin film silicon to induce liquid phase crystallisation and simultaneous doping with shallow donors or acceptors. We have clarified in the introduction and at the start of section 2 that this entire section focusses on electrical doping. We rename section 2 as “Electrical doping of silicon with pulsed-lasers”, section 2.1 as “Historical overview of laser processing (1970s to 1990s): early electrical doping studies”. We better clarify at the start of these sections what they focus on. Similarly, we rename section 2.2 as “Electrical doping by PLM beyond the 1990s” and again stress the focus. For section 3, where we believe the section title (Optical hyperdoping with deep level impurities) is entirely appropriate, we more clearly state upfront what this section focusses on and what the subsections treat. We have changed the subsection titles, “3.1 Chalcogen-hyperdoped silicon”, “3.2 Transition-metal-hyperdoped silicon”, and “3.3 Optical and photodevice characterisation”. We have also clarified what the focus of these sections is at the beginning of them, and at the end of section 1. We believe that these changes help will substantially help the reader to understand that the focus of section 2 is electrical doping, and section 3 is optical doping.
3. Although PLM is an annealing method, it also results in ultra-rapid LPE during solidification. The confusion between PLM and LPE is now clarified between lines 68 to 73 in the introduction.
4. We have removed the subheadings as suggested.
5. We don’t understand what the reviewer means here.
6. Clarified in these definitions in the main text between lines 83-94.

Reviewer 2 Report

1. Authors should be present current scenario of pulsed laser technique in the intro section.
2. Need the detailed investigation of recent outcomes.
3. Should be elaborated the importance of pulsed laser method for the future developments.
4. Need to fix all the grammatical errors and corrections throughout the manuscript. 

Author Response

1. We have added a couple of sentences to the introduction to indicate the current uses of PLM (in flat panel displays for electronic devices and for optical hyperdoping to achieve enhanced IR detection). See lines 74 to 80.
2. We have stressed in section 4 what the recent outcomes are (lines x to x).
3. We have added a few sentences in section 4 that indicate likely developments in the future (lines x to x).
4. We have carefully read through the manuscript to fix errors.

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

The reviewer appreciated the author’s response. However, the manuscript have still some issues:

1. LPE is a solution growth process from a saturated solution consisting of the materials to be grown in a suitable solvent, and then by using precipitated and diffusion process in cooling down duration to grow a single crystal layer.
2. Both of shallow level doping and deep level doping influence (or change) electronic and optical properties of films.
3. The materials in the manuscript should rewrite. It means the cited articles and references have to rearrangement.
4. PLM applications: post annealing, hyperdoping (chalcogens, transition metals, and noble metals), and lase lift off.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

The revised version suitable for publication. 

Author Response

We are pleased that reviewer 2 now finds that our review article is acceptable for publication and thank reviewer 2 for their comments.