Disclosed are a method of producing a crystalline semiconductor material
capable of improving the crystallinity and a method of fabricating a
semiconductor device using the crystalline semiconductor material. An
amorphous film is uniformly irradiated with a pulse laser beam (energy
beam) emitted from an XeCl excimer laser by 150 times so as to heat the
amorphous film at such a temperature as to partially melt crystal grains
having the {100} orientations with respect to the vertical direction of a
substrate and melt amorphous film or crystal grains having face
orientations other than the {100} orientations. Silicon crystals having
the {100} orientations newly occur between a silicon oxide film and
liquid-phase silicon and are bonded to each other at random, to newly
form crystal grains having the {100} orientations. Such a crystal grain
creation step is repeated, to form a crystalline film which has crystal
grains preferentially grown in the {100} orientations with respect to the
vertical direction of the substrate and thereby has sharp square-shaped
crystal grain boundaries.