In this work metal induced crystallization was studied using aluminium and gold deposited over 150 nm amorphous silicon films grown by LPCVD. Aluminium and gold layers with thickness between 1 and 5 nm were deposited on the silicon films and after that, the samples were annealed at 500 degrees C from 5 up to 30 h. When the crystallization is induced through a gold layer, the Si crystalline fraction is higher than when using aluminium. For samples crystallized for 30 h at 500 degrees C with 2 nm of metal a crystalline fraction of 57.5% was achieved using gold and only 38.7% when using aluminium. (C) 2005 Springer Science + Business Media, Inc.