In this work, we investigated a new crystallization method for amorphous silicon (a-Si) using a mixture of nano-energetic materials: molybdenum oxide and aluminum (MoO3/Al). The purpose of using nano-energetic materials is to improve the performance of a-Si films with a self-propagating exothermic reaction over a period of microseconds without any substrate damage. The mixture of MoO3/Al nanopowders was used for a thermite reaction for crystallization of a-Si thin films. Characterization results showed that a-Si thin films were successfully crystallized to poly-Si as evidenced by a Raman peak near 519 cm(-1). The crystalline volume fraction of poly-Si after the nanoengineered thermite reaction was about 94.7% and poly-Si grains was uniformly distributed with an average grain size of around 40-50 nm. These results indicate that high quality poly-Si thin films were successfully prepared on the substrate. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.