The present disclosure relates to a new generation of laser-crystallization approaches that can crystallize Si films for large displays at drastically increased effective crystallization rates. The particular scheme presented in this aspect of the disclosure is referred to as the advanced excimer-laser annealing (AELA) method, and it can be readily configured for manufacturing large OLED TVs using various available and proven technical components. As in ELA, it is mostly a partial-/near-complete-melting-regime-based crystallization approach that can, however, eventually achieve greater than one order of magnitude increase in the effective rate of crystallization than that of the conventional ELA technique utilizing the same laser source.