New model of nucleation and growth in a thin layer between two interfaces

In a-Si/SiO, multilayers, nucleation is random and growth stops at the interfaces. An expression for the halt in growth is derived from the free energy change of a crystallite between two interfaces. This expression supports that the halt in growth occurs in thin layers. The halt in growth causes a serious problem in that the crystalline fraction is overestimated in the Kolmogorov-Johnson-Mehl-Avrami model because phantom crystallites grow partially outside the crystalline region. The present model successfully corrects the crystalline fraction by introducing a generation probability which accounts for the effective size of the phantoms.